Essays by members of the Birmingham speculative club

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G\toWcJJi>dl t)f^H15U^\\J6ut

600059324T

FROM THE PUSlfSHERS

ESSAYS

BT KEKBEB8 OF THE

BIRMINGHAM SPECULATIVE CLUB

,» .

©ssafis

BY MEMBERS OF THE

BIRMINGHAM SPECULATIVE CLUB.

LONDON:
WILLIAMS A NOBGATE, HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GAEDKN.

80DTH FREDEEICK STEBET, EDINBURGH.
1870.

i

2- .

BIRMINGHAM :
PRINTED BT JOSIAH ALLEN, JUN., LIYERT STREET.

npHE present volume contains seven Essays, written
by members of a small Club, which has met
periodically during many years for the conversational
discussion of social and philosophical topics. All the
writers are engaged in the daily pursuit of their
respective trades or professions.

The Essays were not seen by the Club generally,
until they were published ; and each author is respon-
sible for his own essay alone.

Some delay has occurred in pubHcation : the earlier
part of the volume therefore, lies under the disad-
vantage of having been printed in the absence of
information which has since presented itself.

CONTENTS.

ESSAT

I. — Hold fast your Colonies, by William Lucas Saegant. C^

II. — ^The Eelation of Universities to Practical Life, by William

Mathews, jun. ^"

in. — Some Thoughts on Pauperism, by Alfeed Hill. '^

IV. — ^The Natural History of Law, by George J. Johnson. (^

V. — The Future of Women, by Charles Edward Mathews. u

VI. — Euthanasia, by Samuel D. Williams, jun. i/^

VII. — Method and Medicine, by Balthazar W. Foster, (^

HOLD FAST YOUR COLONIES.

I.

GREAT passions make great nations, said Carnot,
the organizer of victory; and he might have
estabUshed his apothegm, both by history and by his
own experience.

The French of an earlier generation had been the
terror of Europe : imder Louis XIV they had dreamed
of universal monarchy; they had ravaged the Palati-*
nate ; but for a voluntary and timely inundation they
would have overrun Holland ; they had defied Europe,
and had fallen only before a continent in arms.

In the reaction that followed those great passions
they had fallen into contempt: under the debauched
Regent, under the effeminate and voluptuous Louis XV
they had abdicated their throne among nations.

But under the good, stoKd Louis XVI, the revo-
lution once more stirred up great passions: among
the lower classes, ardent desires for equality, and for
revenge on an oppressive aristocracy; among the
highest, irresistible dread, and a longing to put down
by foreign strength the impudent attempts of the

B

2 ESSAY I.

canaille; among all classes that remamed at home,
terror and anger at threatened invasion, and burning
resolutions to drive back the aggressors, and to carry-
through Europe, at whatever cost, war to the palace,
peace to the cottage. The nation was again great.

Greater still the nation became after the XVIII
Brumaire, when during fifteen frightful years, the mal-
eficent genius of Napoleon rode upon the wave of
these great passions and directed their storm. After
this outburst followed another reaction, and Bourbon
France lay humiliated, discontented, querulous, rebuked
under the more constant genius of her old insular
antagonist. France felt herself no longer great.

Great in this sense the EngUsh have no wish to be.
With their orderly political convictions, they would
think it shame to decree renunciation of foreign con-
quest, and as a commentary, to seize on Savoy and
Avignon : they would hold themselves disgraced if they
propagated by fire and sword, the Umited government
they love : they woijld not submit to the humiliation
of seeing a British Charles XII playing the Don Quixote
of real life, or a British Napoleon turning the soil of
Europe into a military and bloodstained chessboard.
The French boast themselves the leaders of civiHzation:
according to my definition of the word, the EngUsh
are ahead of them by a century.

But great in other senses, the English are and wish
to be. They are right in desiring the greatness of
heading the civilization of the world: of combining
empire with good faith: of holding nations captive,

THE COLONIES. 3

not by force but by services rendered; by Dooabs
reclaimed, by railroads constructed, by peace main-
tained, by justice administered, by industry protected,
by slavery and torture and Suttee and infanticide
abolished, by government carried on for the benefit
of the subject.

Long may it be too, before we forget our historical
titles 1 There are indeed, thinkers, and sincere thinkers,
who measuring their countrymen by an ideal standard,
can see nothing but their shortcomings. These strange
philosophers, bUnd followers of a foreign genius, who
neglect the history of mankind, and are ignorant of
practical affairs outside schools and colleges, are content
to evolve their theories of national life out of their own
thoughts. They smile contemptuously, and with no
Kttle fatuity, at those who devote themselves to the
slow process of induction ; and who painfully construe*
a standard jfrom experience of the past : who nourish
their minds with the recollection of our political liberty
at a time when France was the willing slave of a
despot ; of our religious hberty when Spain was man-
acled and scourged by a fanatical priesthood ; of our
centuries of glory in Uterature and philosophy; in
later years, of our peaceable developments in manu-
facturing skill, daily industry, and imequaUed com-
merce ; of our national tenderness and sympathy with
the oppressed, not without result, since it carried to
a successful issue a Crusade nobler than that of Peter
the Hermit, a crusade against pirates and menstealers.

Centuries ago, our great passions made us a great

4 ESSAY I.

nation. Under Queen Elizabeth our sustained revolt
against the Papacy, strengthened by horror of the
Smithfield fires ; our well founded dread of the stealthy,
unscrupulous, and daring Jesuits, ready to do whatever
ill at whatever risk, if the Church's work might be
promoted; our half despairing resolve to go out and
fight the Armada, and the joyful revulsion when the
sling and the stone had beaten down the blaspheming
giant: all these passions made us truly great.

Under the Stuarts, religious persecution. Laud and
the Starchamber, Strafford and his thorough, Claver-
house and Lauderdale, the sword and the thumbscrew,
roughly nursed into passionate life the Puritan, the
Covenanter, and the Cameronian ; and driving a handful
of zealots across the Atlantic, laid the foundations of
a mighty democracy. The sombre passions of that
■century multiplied tenfold the greatness of the EngUsh
race.

Then came as our antagonist the magnificent Louis
Quatorze; the would-be universal monarch. His youth-
ful, immeasurable schemes of conquest, backed by his
subjects' lust for glory ; his violent encroachments on
his peaceful neighbours ; the dazzling height to which
he elevated his country ; exciting among us some fear
and more jealousy, made us willing to head a resolute
coalition against the public enemy. After a dozen
years of struggle and of vast pecuniary sacrifice, the
unfailing victories of Marlborough, aided by his diplo-
matic genius, raised our island to the highest pitch
of greatness ; which showed the brighter by contrast

THE COLONIES. 5

with the gloomy destitution into which Fraaice had
fallen. Our great passions had done their work.

Again, at the close of the last century, the minds
of Enghshmen were stirred to their depths. It is
interesting to watch, in a periodical of the time, the
growth of angry feeUng against France : to trace re-
sentment stealing step by step over successive papers,
just as on a listener's face a smile is followed by an
earnest look, and this by an austere frown. Men of
Uberal sentiments had hailed the capture of the BastiUe
as the dawn of Uberty. But the violences of the
French mobs, left unchecked through the king's volun-
tary abdication of just authority ; the anarchical con-
dition of town and country : the wholesale massacres ;
the violent death of a king who had not like our
Charles provoked his fate by hereditary statecraft ; and
of a queen whose beauty and grace were celebrated by
the genius of Burke : all these gradually produced the
pity and terror of the grandest tragedy.

When Napoleon, after the XVIII Brumaire, arrived
at the head of affairs, the English had reached a state
of mind fit for the greatest and bUndest efforts ; and
during the next fifteen years they poured out blood
and treasure, until the enemy of Europe was finally
subdued. Our great passions had raised us to be the
greatest of nations.

Since those days our national life has been com-
paratively tame. France has passed through two more
revolutions without attaining tranquillity : continental
Europe in 1848 trembled with pohtical earthquakes:

t) ESSAY I.

Italy has half blended its discordant provinces into
one great country: Germany has partly realized its
aspirations after unity: Eussia, depleted by the Crimean
war, and now involved in the whirlpool of partially
emancipated serfdom, has ceased to be the bugbear of
Europe. But our career has been little disturbed : the
continental alarms of 1848 only startled the timid with
their echo; even the Crimean war failed to goad us
into passionate feeling.

Is there no danger that so peaceful a course should
interfere with our national greatness ? should sap its
foimdations while we are content with tranquil progress
in wellbeing ? May we not tremble, peeing the preva-
lence of the "Manchester School,'' who would fain
open our ports to the widest commerce, but as to
politics, build around us Berkeley's wall of brass ?

*' O ^le de Manchester, ta peox bien nous donner da coton, da
fer, et da pain; mais je te d^fie de noas donner des hommes." (D

May we not dread the predominance of the modern
Epicurean school ?

** Qai n'a rencontr^, mdme de nos joars, on sage pratiqae, epicv/rien
Bo/M le savoir, mod^r^ dans ses goiits, bonnSte sans grande ambition
morale, se piqaant de bien conduire sa vieP H se propose de tenir
en sant^ son corps, son esprit et son &me, ne gonte qae les plaisirs qai
ne laissent pas les regrets, qae les opinions qai n*agitent point, se garde
de ses propres passions et esqaive celles d'aatrai S'il ne se laisse pas
tenter par les fonctions et les bonnears, c*est de pear de convir an risqae
on d'etre froiss^ dans ane latte. D'bamear libre, ^clair^, plas oa moins
ami de la science, il se contente de connoissances coarantes. Sans trop
s'inqai^ter des probl^mes m^tapbysiqaes, il a depais longtemps plac^
Diea si baat et si loin qa'il n'a rien a en esp^rer ni a en craindre. Qaant
a la vie fatare, il Ta, poar ainsi dire, effac^e de son esprit et ne songe a
la mort qae poar s'y r^signer an joar avec d^cence. Cependant U dispose

THE COLONIES. 7

sa vie avec ime prudence timide, se ramasse en soi, se limite, ne se r^pand
an dehors que dans Tamitie, qui lui parait s^e, ou il jonit des sentiments
qu'il inspire et des cenx qu'il ^prouve. Son ego'isme qui est noble, et
qui Youdrait dtre d^licieux, a oompris que la bienveillance est la charme
de la vie, qu'on en soit Tobjet ou qu'on Faccorde aux autres." ^^^

What would become of our national greatness, if
such sentiments as these prevailed, nursed into life by
peace and prosperity ? what, if the foUowing passage
of the eminent scholar, M. Eenan, described our own
educated men?

** Le gouvemement des choses d'ici-bas appartient en fait I. de tout
autres forces qu'a la science et a la raison ; le penseur ne se croit qu'un
bien faible droit a la direction des affaires de sa plan^te, et, satisfait de la
portion qui lui est ^hne, il accepte Timpuissance sans regret. Specta-
teur dans Tunivers, il sait que le monde ne lui appartient que comme
sujet d'^tude, et lors mdme qu^il potmradt le reformer, peut-dtre le trouve*
t-il si curieux tel qu'il est, qu*U n*en awraU pas le courage.** (3)

Such sentiments might be endured in Epicurus;
one of a nation whose hberty had been extinguished by
Macedonian force: they are pardonable in Lucretius,
who had himself seen the rivers of Roman blood shed
by Marius and Sylla, and had himself trembled at
Catiline's conspiracy : they might be treated with in-
dulgence in a Frenchman under the First Empire,
when absolute power and military glory had crushed
pohtical life. Uttered at the present day, even under
the bewildering uncertainties of the Second Empire,
they seem to me base and detestable, though issuing
from the pen of a writer whose genius I adL^; J
if, as is falsely said by a commentator, they naturally
follow from "every speculation which takes a character
more or less scientific," the sooner such speculation is

8 ESSAY I.

banished from our land, the better will it be for us.
I am glad however, to find that these are not the
dehberate sentiments of M. Renan, but only a whim
flippantly published. In a recent article, he has given
us his deliberate opinions, and has protested against
being led by philosophy into political indifference. ^*^
But the passage I have quoted, expresses no doubt,
the opinions of many speculative minds. Is there a
probability of the predominance of such epicurean
sentiments in Great Britain?

No doubt, we are partly protected from the danger
by the play of our free institutions. Since 1815, we
have escaped revolutions; but we went very near to
one in 1831, when with a little less poUtical wisdom
among our rulers, blood would have been shed. For
fifty years there has been the Roman struggle over
again ; the struggle between people and patricians. As
in Rome, so in Great Britain, the people have won the
day; and as I anticipate, the victory will not be
abused, in Great Britain any more than it was in
Rome, but the democracy will submit to the natural
limitations imposed by social traditions and by the
pressure of a fuUy peopled country.

These blustering gales have saved us from stagna-
tion and tranquil corruption. But the severity of the
storm is past : there scarcely seems room for ardent
political passions. Are we then to become the slaves
of an indolent or speculative egotism ? to the dolce far
niente of an Epicurean, or to the contemptuous
curiosity described by Renan ?

THE COLONIES. 9

I fear that many excellent persons, partisans of
the Manchester school, will meet me here, by denying
the necessity of national greatness. They will say that
we have enough to do at home; that our attention
would be much better directed to needed improvements
in Great Britain; that we ought to apply all our
strength to the promotion of education, the correction
of vice, the purification of our towns, the raising our
labourers' condition; that tiU we have done these
things we have no right to go abroad for adventures
or glory.

Now, if by concentrating all our energies on home
reforms, we could hope to accomplish these at once,
I should be a partisan of this narrow benevolence : but
when we come to particulars, we find that undivided
attention and the greatest sacrifices wiU no more
succeed in suddenly improving our social condition,
than equal attention and sacrifices will suddenly raise
up a wood where there is only a coppice. The late
Duke of Devonshire is said, with the help of Sir Joseph
Paxton, to have removed a full grown tree, at an
expense of many hundred pounds. He got a stunted
tree : a small proprietor will get a far finer tree, at no
expense, by patiently waiting. If we expended our
wealth and our energies on impatient efforts after social
perfection, we might approach the nullity of a Jesuit
Paraguay, destined to perish ; but we should have no
free England, the vigorous offspring of storm and
sunshine.

Peter the Great tried to force the advance of his

10 ESSAY I,

people : after nearly two centuries they are now only
"pawing to get free" from that serfdom which
England naturally escaped from many hundreds of
years ago. Joseph II urged on artificially the pohtical
progress of his kingdoms, and was beaten by the
prejudices he disregarded. There is no royal road
either to knowledge, or to social excellence : time the
great consoler, is also the great reformer.

If the reverse were but true, if the cost of a
Crimean war appUed at home, would rescue us once
for all from vice and uncleanliness ; the nation would
joyfully submit to the cost : what would be a hundred
millions spent in such a cause ? But we find that all
our efibrts accomplish so little, that many excellent but
impatient persons cry out for arbitrary power to
compel people to come in ; overlooking the main con-
dition of the problem, which is, to train people to
help themselves.

I believe therefore, that if we were to abandon all
our foreign possessions, and to resolutely determine
that we would interfere in no European quarrel ; not
even if France were to forcibly appropriate Belgium,
and Spain, Portugal ; not even if Russia were to take
possession of European Turkey, Greece, and Bohemia ;
not even if Prussia were to lay hold of all Scandinavia ;
I do not see how we could with all our concentrated
energies, drive out vice and unhealthiness. The lesson
we want taught is that of self-help : but this cannot be
bought or enforced. All we can do is to remove un-
favourable conditions, and in the case of children to

THE COLONIES. 11

insist on school instruction, a small part of true
education. Beyond this, you get into the Jesuit-
Paraguay experiment, which may perhaps have made
innocent people, but certainly did not make men.

I sincerely believe also, that in surrendering the
greatness of our country, we should throw an obstacle
in the way of training all classes : who seeing around
them a national timidity and a disregard of the claims
and sufferings of other nations, would fall into that
epicurean apathy on which I have already remarked.
Indolence and self-indulgence, are the vices of the
prosperous : these would steal over us unresisted, when
we had abdicated our present magnificent throne.

To me it seems that to hold fast our distant
possessions, is an efficacious antidote to the national
indolence and self-indulgence which I deprecate : that
nothing can be better fitted to keep up those lofty
sentiments which maintain our position as a great
nation.

Not indeed, that I would keep a single colony, or a
single naval station, for the mere purpose of fostering
our pride. To surrender a possession, not through
cowardice but through a conviction of duty, is nobler
than to keep it. I felt that England reached her
highest glory, when in the plentitude of her power,
urged by no base fear, she took the imexampled course
of retiring fi:'om the Ionian Islands.

I would even abandon Gibraltar on sufficient cause
being shown ; though it ought to cost our hearts many
pangs to abandon that grand trophy. I find, and I am

12 ESSAY I.

glad to find, that grave and thoughtful men, despisers
of mere tradition, accustomed to accept and to promote
the newest views of social reform, still fondly cling to
the maintenance of our hold on that Mediterranean
rock. As to those timid poUticians who say that since
we have held it nearly a century, we had better retire
before other great powers eject us. I agree with
those who reply, let them come and turn us out. We
will go out on the promptings of duty ; we will not go
out imder fears of armed force.

An Enghshman, a few years ago, described his
sensations on visiting India : his heart he said, swelled
high when he saw the English flag floating over the
dusky natives. That visitor's patriotic satisfaction was
well foimded. Though we may blush at many offences
committed by us in India during the last century, we
can say with truth that in no other country has a
foreign and despotic rule been exercised so thoroughly
for the advantage of the governed.

I grant that such swelling of the heart is caused
mostly by the sense of the greatness of one's country,
and might have been experienced by a Spaniard under
Phihp II, by a Frenchman imder Louis XIV, by a
Russian before the Crimean war. But it is heightened
and made permanent in our case, by the conscientious
conviction that our greatness is founded on equity and
benevolence.

And yet there are to be found men, and men of
distinction, who speak of our Indian possessions as a
misfortune : as a charge entailing duties and responsi-

THE COLONIES. 13

bilities wliich we should do well to cast off! True
epicureans these, who say to their countrymen, take
your ease ; eat, drink, and be merry : as to national
greatness, that is the dream of enthusiastic fools. For
myself, I regret the grander and rougher days of
Chatham and Burke, when such half-hearted Enghsh-
men would have suffered the scorn they deserve.

I have spoken of the swelling of the heart felt by a
traveller. An old friend of my own, long desirous of
seeing for himself the great continents of the world, at
length was able to leave his affairs in his partners'
hands, and took the opportunity of visiting in succession,
Australia, India, and America. He then felt the truth
of what a Frenchman has said ; that the Teutonic race,
by its Anglosaxon branch, has taken possession of
half the globe : and his warm heart must have been
wonderfully changed if he had not rejoiced, seeing the
spread of his native tongue, and remembering how our
ancient rivals, the French, had once hoped to make
theirs the universal language.

The United States indeed, have long ceased to be
our possessions : they taught us a lesson which we have
thoroughly learnt, not to use force against a great
colony desiring to be free. But the United States,
great as they are, had their beginnings in a few ship-
loads of emigrants ; left pretty much to themselves, as
Canada and AustraKa are now left ; battling with the
Indians, piously hunting out witches, cruel and fanatical
with the vices of their day, but growing up in the
strength of freedom. Let us then foster colonization,

14 ESSAY I.

that in Australia and New Zealand other United States
may grow up, to exhibit in another hemisphere the
language and hterature, the moral energy, and the
Protestant liberty of Great Britain. So shall we
maintain the greatness of the mother country.

Suppose now that my friend, on visiting Austraha,
had been preceded by an Act of Parliament, declaring
that colonies were a nuisance and ought to be got rid
of; and requiring the AustraUans, north, south, east,
and west, to get ready for immediate independence.
Say that a visit to New Zealand had found the settlers
raising a militia, and getting ready a pohtical constitu-
tion, in preparation for our departure : India too, we
might imagine about to be left to its own resources : to
the mercies of new Hyder Alis and Tippo Saabs ; to un-
checked incursions of Mahrattas and tyrannies of
Runjeet Singhs. Would my friend have returned to
England proud of his country : or would he rather have
taken up his parable with Burke, and denounced the
calculators and sophisters who had succeeded to the
grand statesmen of old?

Most men however, are more stationary than my
friend, and confine their wanderings to Europe or
America: they neither scour Hindostan, nor put a
gbdle round the earth, in search of pleasure, instruc
tion, or health. Yet we who vegetate at home, are
stirred up by those who go and return: we listen
eagerly to the accounts of strange races subject to our
dominion ; of manly Maoris and dusky Hindoos : we
are fascinated with the descriptions of the arid plains of

THE COLONIES. 15

Australia, of the steaming atmosphere of Calcutta,
of the minarets of Benares the Splendid. These reali-
ties surpass the fictions of the poet ; who, indeed, can
transport us to Thebes and Athens, to China and
Peru, but cannot stir us as does the sight of the
man who returns fi:om visiting them. Our minds
are enlarged: we remember that the Maori and the
Brahmin and the Santal are our fellow subjects, and
we learn to appreciate the greatness of our country.

The extensive civil and military services in India,
help this practical education. The European soldiery
is now very numerous, and each private sent fi:om this
country, is the centre of a Uttle circle of learners at
home. I have known a young artizan enUst, to escape
the result of a youthful error. After a time he sails
for India : his parents weary for a letter ; and the long
time it takes to arrive, brings home to the mind of the
family more geography than they ever knew before.
Then there come a few lines with uncouth names, and
hints of outlandish people and unheard-of customs;
and if the youth lives and returns, he has strange
tales to teU of the greatness of the Bnghsh power
throughout the world.

The civil service teaches the same lesson to the
middle classes ; who from the time of Chve downwards
have had the administration of India in their hands*
The Governor-Generals indeed, have frequently been
of aristocratic families : such were Marquis Wellesley,
Lord CornwaUis, Lord William Bentinck, Lord Dal-
housie : the Queen's troops, distinct till lately from the

16 ESSAY I.

Company's troops, were commanded as they are at
home, by noble or rich men : but our Indian empire
has been created, organized, saved, by the mercantile
and middle classes. The competitive examinations con-
stantly going on, interest great numbers in Indian
questions : and the youths who succeed in getting
appointments, more skilled with the pen than the
private soldier, constantly remind their friends by their
letters, that there are other English subjects besides
those who Uve within the narrow bounds of our httle
islands.

Those who have no such correspondents, still know
something of our Indian empire. Many in their youth,
have learned how passionately Burke assailed Warren
Hastings in Westminster Hall, and with what glittering
dramatic force Sheridan supported the accusation:
more have read and re-read the biographies of Chve
and Hastings, perhaps the two first of Macaulay's
Essays : some are not ignorant of the Indian career
of the Wellesleys. The Black Hole of Calcutta, the
battle of Plassey, the ravaging of Rohilcund, the treat-
ment of the Begums of Oude, the capture of Seringa-
patam, the murderous battle of Assaye, are classical
among us. Our minds are trained to heroism by these
deeds of our fathers : surrender India, and in a few
generations such exploits would look to posterity as
faint as Cressy and Poitiers look to us.

Even mere readers of newspapers and periodicals,
learn a good deal. Algeria is much nearer to us than
India : the French have great possessions there : at one

•

THE COLONIES, 17

time Abd-el-Kader stirred up a fanatical rebellion. We
read accounts of the war and forgot them, retaining
only an exaggerated recollection of the suffocation of a
tribe in a cave by Pelissier, What Englishman forgets the
Indian Mutiny ; Delhi, Cawnpore, Lucknow, Havelock,
and Colin Campbell ? I cannot say that we know much of
the conquest of Scinde, of the Punjaub, and of Burmah :
but we know nothing of the recent French occupation
of Cochin China ; and we take the hberty of skipping
the long and repeated articles in the Bevue des deux
MondeSy on the Exploration du Mekong. We read with
pleasure of the exploring of the Indus ; and we have a
painful . sympathy with Captain Sturt who died the
other day, poor and blind, after aiding adventurously in
tracing the great rivers of Australia, the ever-diminish-
ing Macquarrie, the Darling, the Murrambidgee, the
Murray, and the Victoria.

All these exploits, in war or peace, have been per-
formed by Englishmen. Give up India and Australia to
anarchy, or to the Russians, the French, the Germans,
and we should turn with loathing from these great
coimtries, and from the noble sentiments they. now
arouse. Let us then hold fast our colonies, so long
as we are not forbidden by the claims of kindness and
justice.

c

18 ESSAY I,

I »

n.

IP it be true then, that national greatness is a just
object of desire ; that those who do not share that
desire are . unworthy of the advantages they enjoy as
citizens of a free country ; and that a passionate but
chastened patriotism teaches us to hold fast our colonies
as a means of maintaining our true greatness, and of
staving off the. indolence and self-indulgence natural
to a prosperous nation ; it still remains to consider at
what cost this consummation may be attained.

First as to the money cost. For myself, even if
that were considerable, I should be disposed to make
light, of it : for with, the fixed conviction I have,
that our national greatness would be sorely imperilled
by the loss of our foreign possessions, I could not
condescend to weigh that greatness in the scales against
an annual expenditure of even many millions. We now
spend nearly 25 millions £. a year on our army and
navy. If by cutting loose from us, Canada, Australia,;
India, and our smaller possessions, we could at once
reduce the 25 millions to 23, this would be a great
triumph in a ministerial budget : it would be. grati-
fying to all who had to pay 4d. instead of 6d. in the £.
for income-tax : and shortly afterwards, when we found
oiu'selves the laughing-stock of the world; when we
experienced for the first time the contempt of France
and Germany and the United States ; there would be

THE COLONIES. 19

a cry for the disgrace of th^ ministry wHich had so
humiliated the country. What a sacrifice for what a
result 1 Two millions a year saved, and the national
greatness gone 1 To rescue half a dozen English
officials, we spend eight or ten millions ; to keep the
Cossacks from the Mediterranean, we spend a hundred
millions ; .and we grudge an annual outlay of a fifth
or a fiftieth of such sums, to maintain our position as
the first of European nations.

I have mentioned two millions as the hypothetical
cost of the colonies to the mother country. I have
fixed pn this sum, because a few years ago, a careful
estimate showed it to be what we were then spending :
the entire amount of four millions which appeared as
our expenditure, being fairly divisible into two equal
parts ; namely, two millions applied to keeping up the
naval and other stations, such as Malta and Cape Coast
Castle, necessary for the protection of our commerce,
and two millions applied to the protection of Canada,
New Zealand, and other colonies.

Since that time, the Colonial Office has been labour-
ing to diminish this two miillions : we know fi:om the
newspapers what a struggle has been going on between
New Zealand and Lord Granville, as to the maintenance
of British troops in the colony. On our part it has
been said: the colony now governs itself: as it has
the delights of independence, it must take also the
responsibilities and the cost. New Zealand has, no
doubt, to deal with natives endowed with masculine
qualities, too often guided by savage instincts, and

20 . ESSAT I.

applied to tHe services of passion and treachery. Our
North American colonies in their earlier days had
equally warlike and more treacherous tribes to encounter.
But if New Zealand has its troubles, and even its
horrors which make our flesh creep, it is free from
those difficulties which beset our early American
colonies. Its progress has been astonishing. Twenty
years ago its annual exports were not £100,000 ; now
they are 5 milhons £. : an increase of fifty fold in twenty
years. Its sheep have increased from one fifth of a
million to nine millions,

Its cattle have increased from 30,000 to 300,000,
Its horses „ „ 3,000 to 70,000.<«

So prosperous a community may fairly be called on to
pay its own expenses.

Gradually then, we may expect to reduce our cost
of 2 miUions £., to a far smaUer sum. I do not say we
jnB,j expect to reduce it to nothing ; because I imagine
that with our extensive and varied possessions, there
will probably be always some requiring more or less
assistance. Jamaica, for example, has never flourished
since the emancipation of the slaves was forced upon
her : we gave what seems a Kberal compensation ; we
are told that even if slavery had continued the com-
petition of other sugar-growers would have ruined the
old island : but after all, here is a distressed colony,
and we cannot set aside its claim upon us. Just as at
home, in the case of a destitute family, we do not say :
your father in his prosperity might have provided for
you; go starve; there is no place for you at nature^s

THE COLONIES, 21

feast : so in the case of an embarrassed colonyi we must
Brcknowledge the claim founded on real want.

I feel the force of the objection : that to relieve the
distressed colonist you tax the distressed householder
at home ; that you have no right to levy a duty on the
poor man's tea that the Jamaica Creole may be aided.
I answer, that this is an excellent reason for revising
our system of taxation, but not for refusing assistance
to a colony,

.Government expenditure may be divided into two
parts. In the first part comes that for poKce, army,
navy, justice; all institutions necessary for protecting
the subject at home and abroad : I should add other
things such as poor law relief, and primary education.
The poorest man partakes directly of the benefits
conferred by these institutions : he may therefore be
justly called on to pay his share of their cost : he has
no more right to get these for nothing than he has to
get his bread and his clothes for nothing.

In the second part may be placed all the ornamental
portions: the Queen's palaces and her privy purse;
the allowances to the royal family : grants for art and
high education; for national galleries and portrait
galleries: the expenses of brilliant embassies. In
these, the people at large are only indirectly interested.

I beheve it would relieve much discontent, if a
clear distinction were made in the Chancellor's annual
budget, between these two classes of expenditure.
When new Joseph Humes ply their invaluable task of
analysing the public accounts, it would be satisfactory

22 ESSAY I.

to be able to 'say: you object to thiia addition to
Buckinghain Palace, or to that embassy for congratu-^
lating the King of Italy, and to a certain grant for
Manchester and Glasgow Colleges ; remember that the
ftmds for these purposes are provided by the richer
classes, and not by the poor man's taxes.

I am not satisfied with the possible reply, that the
income-tax is the very fimd I demand : that it supplies
on the average far more than these extraordinary
expenses, and that it is not levied on the poor. I
would it were so 1 This tax is levied on aU persons
having an income of £100 a year. Are there no poor
among such persons ? Is not the middle-aged curate
with £100 a year, a poor man? or the middle-aged
Burgeon with £150 a year, or the middle-aged solicito]^
with £200 a year? These men are required to look
like gentlemen, and they are reaUy poor; whereas
the artizan who may live as he likes, is not poor with
£80 a year.

The hardship is aggravated by the absurd arrange-
ment which charges the tax on the whole income and
not on that part of the income above £100 ; so that
with a 6d. tax (for small incomes) the receiver of
£99. 19s. pays nothing, and the receiver of £100 pays
£2. 10s., and is the poorer man by £2. 9s. A further
aggravation was added by Mr. Gladstone ; and in my
estimation it is so grievous a cruelty that it cancels
a considerable portion of the vast services he has
rendered to his country. Sir Robert Peel fixed the
limit at £150, but Mr. Gladstone reduced it to £100.

THE COLONIES. 23

Tlid dufferers are just that class wEo have little political
influence, and who have had to bear their sufferings with
what patience they possess. Every man who takes
part in affairs, has some thorn of remorse left in his
mind, and Mr. Gladstone may some day feel the woimd
of this thorn.

Such a fund as I require, has therefore still to be
formed ; a fimd for superfluous expenditure : and out
of this fimd I should be quite willing that we should
pay the colonial expenses which continue to fall on us.
Thus, we should escape the charge of taxing the farm-
labourer's beer, or the curate's tea, to support a
national greatness which such men ought not to pay for
so long as their own necessities are barely supphed.

I have said that the annual expense of two millions
is in course of reduction, and though it may not be
extinguished, may probably be brought down to a
small sum. But even if the expense continued to be
a paltry two miUions, (paltry in comparison with the
true greatness we buy with it) I should think it wisely
incurred.

I believe however, that even on this improbable
supposition of our having to permanently disburse two
millions annually, we should not ba losers even of
money, because we should far . more than recoup our-
selves. We are told indeed, that if free trade were
universally adopted, it would be a matter of indifference
to our commerce whether our colonies were governed
by us, by some other European power, or by them-
selves. I may answer that free trade is not universally

» A.

1.

d.

.

8

6

.

10

. 1

7

. 3

8

. 4

3

6

. 10

6

24 ESSAY I.

adopted, that there is no near prospect of such a con-
summation, and that if we may judge by the practice
of the United StateSj a newly settled country is not
the part of the world where free trade is popular.

As to the actual commerce going on, it is worth
while to look at the following figures, which refer
to a period thirty years ago.<«

In 1838 every Brazilian took from us
manufactures to the value of
Every inhabitant of the United States .

„ „ Canada

„ „ Our West Indies .

„ „ Cape of Good Hope

„ „ Australia

"We must remember that the Americans are a far
richer people than the Canadians, and are therefore
capable of importing much more.

But even if free trade were universal, I cannot
believe that the possession of colonies would be a
matter of indifference to our commerce. It is far
easier to trade with persons who speak your own
language. No doubt, if the present colonies were cut
off from us, they would go on for a time talking and
writing English. But who can say what might be
their fate ? One might throw itself into the arms of
France; another might become a Prussian dependency:
for those great European powers would move heaven
and earth to get a share of our cast off possessions.
German emigration would be diverted from Ohio to the
new German Colony : the German language would be

THE COLONIES. 25

substituted and our commerce would suffer. Besides,
if we surrendered our claim to the unsettled parts of
Australia, there would be nothing to prevent other
European powers from starting colonies there, as
France has actually done in occupying New Caledonia,
when we declined that island. Though France is un-
successful in colonization. North Germany is great in
emigration, and now it is becoming a great maritime
power, there is no reason why its shoals of emigrants
should not form colonies of their own. The preachers
of indolent surrender, overlook the existence of other
Europeau nations, burning with envy of our possessions,
smihng at our proposed abdication, and eagerly waiting
the opportxmity to take our place. How little should
we look, if we found that in surrendering our greatness
we had lost our commerce also I What sort of gratitude
might we expect from our sons, when they felt the
destructive consequences of our indolence I

I win say Uttle of emigration, because we see that
it can go on without the possession of colonies. The
swarms of people from North Germany, who hive for
the most part in Ohio and the neighbouring states,
prove the needlessness of colonies for this purpose.
But with regard to the educated classes the case is
different. There are constantly growing up among us
numbers of young men, many of them fresh from
Oxford and Cambridge, indisposed to enter the Church,
unfit for the Bar or unwilling to await its uncertain
awards, shrinking from Mediciue, and wanting intro-
duction into business, with no prospect of a home, and

26 ESSAY I.

quite ready for travel and adventure. Our Indian admin-
istration attracts many such men, our colonies a few.

I find objectors who go on repeating that we
cannot spare the emigrants, for that we are not over-
peopled. I reply that if an artizan is without employ-
ment, it is no comfort to him that a ploughman is
wanted in Lincolnshire: it is better for the artizan
and better for the nation that he should go abroad
where he can get work, and where his children wiU
easily get forward* It is useless to have men, unless
they are men in places they are fit for.

We are told also, that those who go are the best,
the backbone of the nation: that the resolute and
enterprising go abroad, leaving the timid and apathetic
at home. This is not the whole truth. If I look
around among young men of my acquaiQtance, I see
some who are worthy of all respect, but who cannot
settle down to a fixed town employment: who long
for movement, air, sunshine, and storm, and who are
impatient under the monotonous restraints of everyday
occupations. These are the men for volunteer fire
brigades, and in case of war for fighting; but they
are not the backbone of the nation in times of peace.
Emigration, employment in India, a mission to the
end of the world, form their natural resources. In
sending them away, we get rid of an explosive material,
dangerous in quiet times : we apply the material to a
useful purpose, on the plains of Australia, or up the
country in India. In one sense these are our best
men : they are the best to go, not the best to stay.

THJB COLONIES. 27

III.

BUT however immense may be the advantages to
ourselves, in reputation, in real greatness, in
commerce, and in social arrangements, we have no
right to retain our hold on our external possessions,
against the true interest of their inhabitants or even
against their dehberate wishes. I have already said
how dehghted I was when England set the example,
the first in the history of the world, says M. Guizot,
of retiring spontaneously from a foreign possession;
The Ionian Islands may, or may not, be the better
for losing the fostering care of a rich, spirited, and
just nation, and casting in its lot with a barren and
distra^jted Uttle kingdom. My sympathies however,
are with the lonians: I would rather be poor with
a government of my own people, than rich with a
government of foreigners. At any rate, we were
right in yielding to the expressed wish of the
inhabitants: and we were fortunate in having an
opportunity of showing our real greatness, by
voluntarily retiring.

If therefore, the Dominion of Canada should clearly
and calmly determine to ask us to retire, we should be
boimd to go. But since no one can foresee what is
likely to happen in this respect ; since it may turn out
that the slight, silken bond which unites the colony to
the mother country, is infinitely stronger than an iron

28 ESSAT I.

chadn of military force; it is useless to discuss the
probability of separation on account of incompatibility
of temper, and we are limited to the inquiry, what
the real interests of the colonies require.

Do the real interests of the colonies require us to
abandon them to their own imchecked management ?

True greatness should be the patriotic desire of
every community, great or small; of a colony as of a
moL eo^^tr? "^Me™ individnaa life; Lonnn,
only to exist and to get rich; disregard of social
excellence; carelessness about true national distinc-
tion ; are as contemptible in the new world as in the
old, in the southern hemisphere as in the northern.

But if you turn a colony adrift, if you leave it to
struggle for existence, if you cut it off from direct
sympathy with the old world and with its delicacies
and refinements, you leave the colonists to devote
themselves unchecked to the pursuit of their material
interests. Even so great a country as the United
States, after nearly a century of national life, is much
wanting in the higher accomplishments of older
nations. While the Americans have multipUed ten-
fold, and their wealth has increased fiftyfold, their
distinguished men have been few: they cannot
produce ten soldiers such as George Washington, ten
statesmen such as Alexander Hamilton, ten philosophers
such as Franklin. How long will it be before high
works of Uterature, philosophy, and art, arise in New
Zealand or Canada? But so long as these settle-
ments are parts of our Empire, they share our

THE COLONIES. 29

achievements, tiey partake of our glories, they
sympathize with our successes, they are Englishmen*

They have few historical monuments, but they
share in those of Great Britain. They have no York
Minster or Westminster Hall; but when they visit
those venerable places, they feel that they are theirs
as much as ours, since the colonist is a unit of the
empire. The Americans also, try to feel in this way :
they say that their ancestors as well as ours raised
and illustrated those wonderful edifices : but they are
conscious while they are speaking that nearly a hun-
dred years ago they violently, though wisely, entered
on a career of their own, and disclauned all sympathy
with reverential European sentiment; and that once
every year they proclaim in the strongest language their
superiority over the effete Europeans. The Protestant,
if he pleases, may boast that his ancestors shared in
exalting the Pope above the world of kings and
emperors, in denouncing Huss, in persecuting WycKffe ;
but the Roman Catholic reminds him that for four
hundred years his church has renoimced all satisfaction
in such deeds. The Americans can raise but a faint
claim to our past glories : the claim of the colonist is
as good as that of the Oornishman or the Scotchman.

There are men to whom these considerations
appear transcendental : men who believe in their own
superior enhghtenment, and show their wit by sneering
in choice language at the romantic notions of a past
generation. Let them sneer on, and deKght in raising
a facile laugh among clubs and coteries. The great

30 ESSAY I.

lesson^ of philosophy and history will survive their
futilities.

But there are considerations which even the pro-
saic, the worldly minded, the cynical, cannot neglect.

We have surrendered to the colonies the right of
making their own laws as to aU things local : we have
reserved to the imperial parUament and the British
Government the determination of all matters affecting
the whole empire.

In administration however, even in some things
directly interesting only the colonies themselves, the
crown has kept its old powers ; as for example, in the
appointment of a Governor. This is reckoned a
small matter: yet it might not appear such if the
practice were changed, and if each colony had to make
this appointment for itself.

Look at the United States, with a population now
much outnumbering our own : see with what eager-
ness the election of a President is conducted; with
what previous discussions, with what party meetings ;
with what newspaper virulence and monstrous lying ;
with what unscrupulous misrepresentation of opponents'
motives: with what unblushing scandal and calumny
as to the candidates proposed 1 K such unbridled
passions prevail among so huge a people, what would
be the bitterness and hatred stirred up among a him-
dred thousand, or a million of people, living compara-
tively near to each other as in New Zealand or South
Australia ? We know that in the small Italian repubhcs
of the middle ages, so dangerous was the political

THE COLONIES. 31

excitement attending the choice of a Doge, that the
power of election was sxirrendered to another state
which had no interest in the matter : just as if lately,
Spain, in the agony of fixing on a king, had formaUy
caUed on Queen Victoria to make the choice. If we.
did nothing else but appoint governors to our colonies,
our services would be great.

Again ; there is the admixture of races. Very near
to us we have a formidable illustration of the difficulties
arising from this : in Ireland we see Celts and Saxons
living together; two great streams flowing side by side
for centuries and not mixing. Most of us believe that
if we cast off Ireland, as we are told to cast off our
colonies, the Celt and the Saxon would soon be at
each other*s throats.

In Jamaica we have lately had a humiliating example,
of the injustice which may be practised by Englishmen
when deahng with other races. Whatever opinion we
may form of Governor Byre ; whether we regard him
as a man who with open eyes did his duty, knowing
the hazard to his own reputation and fiiture prospects ;
or rather as a resolute man with a narrow field of
vision, capable of being a hero to-day and an oppressor
to-morrow, first the generous protector of bushmen,
and afterwards the severe repressor of coloured men :
whatever may be our estimate of Governor Eyre, we
cannot deny that among his advisers and subordinates
there was an unscrupulous ferocity worthy of the com-
panions and successors of Columbus ; nor can we have
forgotten that those bloodthirsty men, far from being

32 ESSAT I.

punished by their West Indian fellows, were regarded
as the sayiours of the colony. Let it be considered by
those who clamonr for abandoning the colonies, how
they would feel when they heard that an absolute
military power established by the whites, had been
followed, as it probably would be, by a negro insur-
rection, accompanied by all the violences and abom-
inations which converted Hayti from a great French
colony into a half barbarous negro kingdom.

But besides the difficulties between one race and
another, there would be difficulties between different
portions of the same race. Englishmen, at home or
abroad, are tenacious of their rights and prompt in
defending them. At present, if Jamaica is wronged by
Barbadoes, an appeal is made to the sovereign power ;
which arbitrates, pronounces, and forbids recourse to
violence. Left to themselves, Jamaica and Barbadoes
might ruin themselves in a passionate struggle. Great
Britain, the lord paramount, keeps the peace among
her vassals, without demanding the payment of blood
and money formerly enforced by the sovereign power.

A great state has lately been created in America.
The two Canadas have been amalgamated, and with
the addition of Hudson's Bay and the smaller provinces,
now constitute the Dominion of Canada: an English
province, with a population as great as that of Holland,
and a territory as extensive as that of Europe. We
all know that Nova Scotia, having at first agreed to
the project of amalgamation, afterwards declared that
it had been surprised into assent, and desired to with-

THE COLONIES. 33

draw it. Much discussion, recrinunation, negociation :
at last Nova Scotia gave way. Now if there had been
no predominant power to appeal to, there would have
been great danger of violence : the Canadas, conscious
of strength, would have used high words ; Nova Scotia,
irritated and gradually rising to fighting pitch, would
have embodied volunteers, purchased arms, appealed
perhaps to France, or the United States. Blood would
have been shed ; and perhaps Nova Scotia would have
belonged to a foreign power.

Travel to the other side of the world. There we
have a number of colonies in different parts of the
Fifth Continent ; we have New South Wales, Tasmania,
South Australia, Western AustraUa, Victoria, and
Queensland: if we withdraw our claim to dominion^
these six settlements would become so many inde-
pendent states. The project of a federation would of
course be renewed : we might require such an arrange-
ment as a condition of our withdrawing : the proximity
of the settlements to the seaboard would faciUtate
this ; though after all, distances of thousands of miles
would make it difficult notwithstanding the aid of tele-
graphs. Again ; to protect the AustraUan Federation
against the intrusion on the continent, of French or
German colonies, we might make over to the Federation
all our sovereign rights.

Yet there would still be a probability of dangerous
complications. The boundaries of the new states of
the Federation, would be vague, in a country so imper-
fectly mapped out: the sheepruns of New South

D

34 ESSAY I.

rWales, might unwittingly be carried into Victoria or
Queensland: certain goldfields on the borders might
be contended for by two of the states ; and taxes paid
to the one might be claimed by the other. At present
the sovereign power admits no resort to violence or
even threats: but with a weak central government
at starting; with individual provinces not bound together
as were the United States, by a seven years' struggle with
England, and long afterwards by fears of a renewed
contest ; with a rough, people, many of them not
unacquainted with crime; there would be danger of
quarrels more severe than' the American ones, when
New Englanders reftised to take part in the naval war
with Great Britain, or Carolina's nullification yielded
only to Greneral Jackson's threats : there: might arise
on a small scale a civil war such as that which has
lately desolated the United States.

In New Zealand, there are two distinct interests t
the northern island contains the greatest part of the
Maories; the southern island contains few of them;
would a government common to both, do its duty in
protecting the north? Even now the difl&culty is
felt, but it is prevented by our control, from being
aggravated into violent quarrels.

As to the Cape, I find the following remarks in the
year 1867.^^^ In Grahamstown,

''The Eastern province is determined on separation from the
Western. The late session of Parliament has shown that sooner or
later this must come to pass. The Eastern province, almost entirely
English, naturally objects to being literally dragged into bankruptcy
by the Western (Dutch). The Western is, of course, able to gain a

THE COLONIES. 85

slight majbrity in Parliament, returning tLr^ more members than its
sister province ; this is the only obstacle, so say the Easterns, to
separation. Since Government will take no steps to put an end to the
endless ravages made by the Cafires on farmers' stocks in Caffraria,
it is not to be wondered at that in those parts the frontier people are
very anxious to be taken out of the hands of their neighbour province,
since all the money voted by Parliament appears to be spent in Qapetown
improvements, and the expenses of the Frontier Cape Mounted PoHce
are being cut down. People in England have no idea of the enmity
existing between East and West." *

Six months later there occurs similar information,
with comphcations of geography difficult to unravel.

"Grrahamstown.(8) The mail from the Orange Free Stated has
just arrived, bringing news calculated to make traders and intending
settlers pause before proceeding up country. The Basutos are
determined to prevent the Boers occupying the newly acquired district.
"* The country,' says the Friend, ' is rapidly, drifting into a chronic state
of hostilities, which must, if a better policy be not adopted, continue
till our white population are beggared and ruined.' The report of a
rising against this miserable Dutch Government on the part of the
English proved to be unfounded, but as a friend just arrived here in-
formed me yesterday, it is not unlikely to take place any day. Th^
Grovemment have declared that ' the country could not afford a police
force,' so the purchasers, of land refuse to occupy without protection.
Of course, with this contiiiual agitation going on, no one will risk capital
and there will be no new comers. The Grovemment of the Orange Free
State can neither keep peace with the surrounding tribes, nor can they
conquer them. The English party would be in favour of annexation,
but probably the Boers would not, for the Dutch as a rule detest th6
English in their hearts all over South Africa. It is very doubtful too»
whether our Gk>vemment would care about having anything more to do
with our former territories, though their climate and soil no doubt are
far superior for agricultural purposes to the uncertain seasons and
poverty-stricken lands of the British provinces."

Here you have a colony, planted originally by the
Dutch, and taken from them by the British forces.
Perhaps we should have done wisely on the conclusion
of peace, to restore the colony, retaining a naval

36 ESSAY I.

station if we saw fit. But this course was not taken :
under a British government, numbers of English have
established themselves. The former Dutch settlers,
(the Boers) have remained and have multiplied : they
hate the English as foreigners, as conquerors, and as
men who a generation ago, impoverished them by
putting an end to slavery. Enmities of race have a
wonderful vitality; witness Ireland, Poland, and as
readers of George Sand's admirable Gonsuelo know,
Bohemia. Grenerations may pass away before the Cape
disputes are composed; unless indeed, the British
should grow so fast as to greatly outnimiber the
Boers, just as they have grown and outnumbered
the Canadian French. I say nothing in this place of
the Caflfres, though they create further difficulties.

Certainly, it is unpleasing to us to find men of our
own race, speaking such a barbarous lingo as the one
caricatured in Artemus Ward : we recoil fi^om the
habitual revolver and Lynch law: we should unwil-
lingly see introduced into Canada and Australia, the
periodical Presidential struggle, ending with the
dismissal of foreign envoys, and civil servants down
to the very postmen. Let us try to save our colonies
fi:om these blots on civilization.

We should not feel proud of a renewed struggle
between the Europeans and the coloured men of
Jamaica; nor of another 1839 in Canada; nor of a
war among English Boers and Caffi:^s at the Cape.
We should be heartily ashamed, if through indolence
we had left the Dominion of Canada to coerce Nova

THE COLONIES. 37

Scotia, or if hereafter we found in New Zealand
the southern island refusing to help the northern
against the Maories, or the various Australian
settlements fighting about goldfields and sheepruns.

For the sake of the Colonies themselves, let us
hold them fast.

IV.

TT^ATEVBR may be our conclusion as to keeping
▼ T our foreign possessions generaUy, we must all
feel that the reasons on either side are stronger in
9ome cases than in others.

As to Gibraltar^"* for example: whatever may be
our patriotic exultation, in holding a rock which we
took by force more than 160 years ago, and the
defence of which by EUott with his red hot shot, is
one of the familiar feats of British arms, we cannot
conceal from ourselves that there are urgent reasons
for considering the proposals to abandon it. I go no
further than this: I beUeve that I should be better
pleased at first to find that after full and candid inquiry
we held ourselves justified in retaining the place ; but
I am convinced that if we arrived at the opposite
conclusion, second thoughts would make me more
proud of my countrymen when they vacated the place
voluntarily, than I should be if on suflBcient grounds
they resolved to keep it. It would be the repeated

38 . ESSAY I.

glory on a grander scale, of the cession of the Ionian
Islands.

The one powerM argument in favour of retiring,
is. the resentment felt by the Spaniards at seeing the
rock in the keeping of foreigners. We are bound to
constantly repeat the commonplace question, how we
should feel if the Land's End were garrisoned by
Austrians : we should not be reconciled to such humili-
ation even though we had borne it five himdred
years.

It is alleged that the Spaniards hate us, and will
continue to do so while we hold Gibraltar. The same
writers who insist on this fact, at the same time de-
nounce our " selfish greed of power," and declare that
our treatment of Spain has been "selfish, haughty^
and oppressive." If this be true, the withdrawal of our
garrison would not secure to us the afiection of the
Spaniards. There is an obvious reason why it should
not. Sixty years ago we undertook their defence
against the French: after six years' fighting at our
own expense, we drove the invaders over the Pyrenees :
at Talavera, at Salamanca, at Vittoria, we beat them
in pitched battles. But these battles were won by the
British: the Spaniards reaped the benefit, not the
honour: the necessities of war compelled our great
general to censure the vacillation and the unreadiness
of the Spanish armies ; to treat them as mere supple-
mentary militia, who could hold a post but could not
manoeuvre in the field ; and finally on entering Prance,
to order them back as insubordinate plunderers. The

THE' COLONIES. 39

services we rendered were too great to be forgiven j
the Spaniards were "bankrupts in gratitude:" the
exhibition of their own military incapacity by the side
of our unfailing success, maddened them with envy
and jealousy. These malignant sentiments might no
doubt, gradually disappear, but for the unfailing irri-
tation caused by Gibraltar.

The various writers on this controversy are apt to
begin wiU. .aying that " they discard J^J>nt^
question:" meaning apparently that it ought to be
discarded. But I contend that the recollection of our
ancestors' prowess in taking and defending the rock,
is just what should not be discarded, and should even
be carefully fostered.

Yet I am quite willing to listen to the declarations,
that though the place, properly defended, is impreg*-
nable, yet that it is worth nothing to us as a fortified
post ; and that the anchorage of the bay is bad, with
insufficient shelter for vessels, while Ceuta on the
opposite coast would suit our purpose better: but I
also pay attention to the contrary objections that while
Gibraltar is ours, Ceuta is not; that the climate of
Ceuta is bad, and that even if fortified at whatever
cost, it could not be made secure.

I conclude that I should much Hke to see a public
inquiry, with witnesses from Prance, Bussia, the United
States, and Spain itself. It might turn out that just
as the Great Powers committed to our care the Ionian
Islands in trust for Europe, so they would now protest
against our withdrawal fi^pm Gibraltar, as behoving the

40 ESSAT I.

defence of the Straits safest in our keeping. So sup-
ported we might safely, and with an unhurt conscience,
refuse to withdraw.

The case of Canada is quite different. There is a
remarkable accordance among all parties in England as
to the desirability of being well rid of a colony so
near to the United States, so far from our shores;
so accessible to American attack, so manifestly impos-
sible for us to defend. But we are equally agreed that
to withdraw before the Canadians desire our departure,
would be pusillanimous and base.

K the Canadians should be unwilling to give up
their birthright as Enghshmen; if they should shrink
from the stump oratory and corruption attending the
election of a President ; and would rather have a Grov-
emor sent over by the crown, preferring an English
gentleman to a popular tailor; and if they should be
willing, in order to secure these advantages, to abstain
from protective duties on British commerce ; the con-
nexion between us may continue, until the Dominion
of Canada grows into a powerful ally, as valuable to
us in any unhappy dispute with America, as Scotland
was formerly valuable to France in her wars with
England.

The greatest of all our dependencies however, is
India ; and the/possession of that vast country makes
us an object yof envy to every European nation. If
we are fit fpr the high calling of governing such a
magnificent province; if our predominance is applied
to benefitting the Hindoos; if we really accomplish

THE COLONIES. 41

what the Great Mogul formerly attempted, in protecting
the subject races from oppression by the Mahometan
conquerors, in keeping the peace between hostile tribes,
in preventing the growth of robber chieftains, in con-
structing roads, water courses and reservoirs ; then we
may with a safe conscience maintain oiu^ sovereign
power. Remembering the course of events before we
became masters; the breaking up of the Mogul Empire;
the rise of unscrupulous princes such as Hyder AH
and Tippoo Saib ; the growth of the Mahrattas in the
Western HiUs, and their devastating and constantly
repeated descents on the peaceftd plains, ravaging,
enslaving, and burning; and seeing the impossibihty
of constituting any native central power which could
hinder the return of such aaarchy and misery, I rejoice
to think that in the interests of humanity we are com-
pelled to hold our ground, and are as imable as most
of us are unwilling to hsten to the base proposals of
feeble epicureans. Whether we will or not, we must
continue to be a great nation; fulfilling the duties,
and accepting the responsibihties, of greatness.

There are men, I know, who sincerely deny the
right of any people to force themselves on another
people as their governors : and who adopt the cry of
India for the Indians. I reply to this in the words
of Eari Grey.<">

" I believe that a spirit of disaffection has been fonnd, in the earlier
years of British supremacy, to prevail very generally avnong the Jiigh&f
classes of native society in the varions countries of British India which
have been successively brought under our dominion; and that something
veiy similar may be observed wherever a semi-civilized or a barbarous

42 ESSAT r.

people is brongbt under British mle. That rale is generally a blessing
to the popnlation at large; but it is not less generally obnoxious to those
who, as priests, or chiefs, or nobles, have been at the head of the native
society, because, in addition to their feeling painfully their inferiority to
the ruling race, they also find that they can no longer Tnaintain their
station among their own countrymen, when British authority interferes
with the exercise of their former tyrannical power, and when British
example and the diffusion of education gradually emancipate the minds
of the mass of the population from the superstitions by which they are
enthralled."

That we are hated by the old Mahometan conquerors,
and by Hindoo princes, and by priestly Brahmins, I
have no doubt. But if the same hostility prevailed
among the masses, we certainly should have been ex-
terminated during the mutiny; outnumbered as we
were by a thousand to one. Apparently, we no more
maintain ourselves by force, than did the native rulers
before us.

What a Hindoo may feel on this subject is told
us by an English critic, reviewing a recent book by
Bholanauth Ghunder}^^

" The most interesting parts of the book are those which convey to
us the opinions of the Hindoos with reference to our Goyemment in
India, or which describes the aspirations of the native population. The
author, no doubt, gives us the views of the more intelligent and educated
section of his race, but he is also well acquainted with the condition and
wants of the general population. Of the MaJumvmedouns he speaks, as
may be supposed, with (wersion and dislike. He is quick to perceive the
willingness of the Mussulmam, to oppress the Hindoo, if he had the power.
He remembers the wrongs of his people, and is attracted towards the
English because they have rendered a repetition of those wrongs im-
possible. More than once he dwells upon the fact that every man in
India is free to worship according to the dictates of his conscience.
* The Mussulman,' says the Hindoo, ' is a fangless cobra, theet bides the
time to raise his head from the dust.' Of his own people, the Bengalees,
the author frankly admits that if the English were to leave them

THE COLONIES. 43

toasters of themselves, they would ' on the next day have to apply to
the British Parliament for succoury with epistles styled, The Groans
of the Bengalee/ *'

Ob this opinion, and on others of the same kind,
I feel much satisfaction in quoting French authors;
because I am convinced that however candid they may
be, they would not strain the truth in our favour.

Now we find M. Q-. Lejean saying as foUows, with
regard to the mutiny, and with regard to the protection
of the weak against the strong.

"The(i3) insurrection of 1857 does not show that India was dis-
contented, or desired to return to its native princes ; it was a pretorian
movement, with religion for a pretext, and was aimed at the Hindoo
people as well as at the English predominance. The supporters of the
revolt were native aristocrats irritated against a system which bridled
their organized spoliation of the laborious classes. Most of the Sepoys
belonged to this squirearchy, impoverished by the suppression of
abuses, and to whom the East India Company had opened the ranks
of their army, a career which supplied them with honourable means of
existence, and preserved them some importance in the eyes of their
countrymen. Their first act on restoring the Mogul Empire at Delhi,
in the person of old Bahadur- Shah, was to sack the shops. Accordingly
the masses took no part in the movement; and at the present time,
as then, a hostile army invading India, would be recruited with only a
few incurable fanatics, the loose population, and the bazaar thieves. The
Hindoo people, timid, gentle, docile, subtle, and intelUgent, perfectly
understands that it has nothing to gain by a change of masters, and that
no new government will surpass the present in the matters of civil
and religious liberty, equality before the law, and security for person
and property."

French praise of an Indian administration is nothing
new. Nearly forty years ago a young man, clever,
rather conceited, prejudiced against the English, left
his Parisian literary associates, to spend some years
under the dominion of the East India Company. This

44 ESSAT I.

is Victor Jacquemont's testimony, as it will be found
in a late article of the Edinbv/rgh Review.

"One<^^) mnst have travelled throngh the Panjanb io know what
an imrneme henefii to mankind English role in India has been I How
moch misery it spares eighty millionB of men! A ntmierons class of
the population in the Ponjaub lives by the gon. It is perhaps a most
wretched class, but in strict justice it has no right to anything except
to be hanged. I cannot mtness the horrible evils of such a system
without heartily wishing that the English may carry their frontier from
the Sutlej to tiie Indus, and that the Russians may occupy the other
bank. It is generally believed that a terrible collision between these
two great Powers will some day or the other decide the fate of Asia;
but I am inclined to think that then, and then only, peace will reign in
these vast territories. European civilization desires to invade the
universe. In default of the cwiUzaiion the domination of the West
is an immense benefit for the peoples of all the other parts of the
world ; and it is probably the only boon that the religious institutions
of the East will allow us to confer."

I will quote much later testimony: another passage
of M. G. Lejean in 1867.

** Content(^) to secure in India the magnificent position bequeathed
by the Company, England has no inclination, and probably never will
have, to run hazardous risks. The recriminations of certain journals
against English encroachments in India are quite out of date. Far
from accusing England of interfering with native liberty, one may rather
reproach her with being restrained by financial considerations, &om
making further annexations, profitable alike to general civilization and
to Hindoo well-being. I have merely traversed this country, but I have
seen how certain petty tyrants, such as the Maharajah of Cachmere, the
Nawab of Bhawulpoor, and the Guicowar of Baroda, treat the people,
the gentlest, the most industrious, and the most docile of the East.
Surely one might say that English policy suffers the continuance of
these brigands in the heart of its Asiatic empire, to teach a lesson to its
own subjects, and to make them appreciate by comparison, the truby
exempla/ry admvnistraiion by which they benefit."

A year later, in 1868, I find in the Bevue des deiix
MondeSj a notice of Mr. Kaye's Lives of Indian Officers.
The French critic begins thus.^^^^

THE COLONIES. 45

"When we stndy the colonies of the present day, and try to estimate
the expansion of modem races, onr attention is fixed above all on the
colossal empire which the English have created in India. I^owhere else
has the triumph of onr ciyilization been so complete ; nowhere else has
the superiority of European manners shone out so brightly. To annex
twenty native states one after another and in fact one by another, to
modify the cruel practices and the narrow spirit of Brahminical caste,
to subdue the military influence of the Mahometans, to establish a
peaceM and centralized government on the ruins of monarchies ex-
hausted by the intestine struggles of eight centuries, to rule 180 millions
of Asiatics with a handfiil of foreign soldiers, such is the spectacle pre-
sented by the contemporary history of India, and this great task has
been accomplished in less than half a century."

I do not understand how half a century can be
assigned as the period of our work ; but if we say a
century, the marvel is great enough. The writer goes
on to say that the English poUcy succeeded so well,
because

" It has been carried out by wonderful instruments, by the civil op
military servants of the Company, energetic men, with knowledge and
perseverauce, ambitious as men should be when they go four thousand
leagues to seek their fortune."

In November of the same year, 1868, there appeared
in the Moniteurj a " Report on British India, presented
to the Minister of Agriculture, Commerce, and Pubhc
Works, by M. Jacques Siegfried (of Mulhouse)/'

The Pall Mall Gazette^^'^^ says of this report:

''M. Sieg&ied is almost enthusiastic in his general views of the
present position and prospects of India in a material point of view ; and
his appreciation of the part which the British Government, and still
more the British nation and public opinion, have taken in the creation
of that prosperity is certainly complimentary. • The English,' he says,
' have applied to the government of their colonies (and that especially
for the last few years), a practical spirit which is very remarkable.
Treating as secondary those ideas which were once all-powerful, of abso-
lute domination, exclusivism, and even to some extent that of religious

46 ESSAT I.

propagandism also, they now appear espedally preoocapied mtli the
material interests of their possessions. Their leading object seems to
be that of increasing the well-being of the populations, and introducing
them to civilization through the method, a little circuitous perhaps, but
which appears to me the surest, of commerce and exchange of products.' "

I find the Revue des deux Mondes^^^^ noticing M.
Siegfried's report in muoli the same manner, and with
equal implied approbation.

" M. Siegfried ne cache pas Tenthousiasme que lui inspire Toeuvre
de la race anglosazonne qui a su imposer des lois h un pays six ou sept
fois grand comme la France et peupl^ par 200 millions d'habitans. Le
sol, qui est d'une fertility exceptionelle, foumit tons les produits qu'on
lui demande et pent alimenter un commerce d*exportation colossal,
pendant que la colonic elle-mdme of&e a Tindustrie europ^nne un
d^bouch^ presque illimit^. Toutes ces ressources, on les voit se d^vel*;
opper h vue d'oeil sous Tinfluence d'une administration que M. Siegfiied
nous repr^sente comme tm niadele de howne poUUque" '

Even Bussia, as I see, adopts a tone of praise.
The Jov/mal de 8t. Petershourg, while expressing its
satisfaction at the moderate tone adopted by us as to
Bussian affairs in Central Asia, says that

" The<i^^^ British nation has perceived that there is now no country
in the world which does not approve of its rule in India, and regard it
as a pledge of civilization."

This eulogy may be hypocritical ; but in that case it
is "the tribute which vice pays to virtue."

To retire from India then, would be to leave the
gentle Hindoos a prey to the fiercer Mahomedans:
to leave the field open to soldiers of fortune to cut
their way to thrones : to expose the plains of India to
more devastations by new Scindiahs and new Holkars,
like those painfully put down by Sir Arthur Wellesley:
to substitute oppression for justice, and anarchy for

THE COLONIES. 47

order. Even to talk about retiring, must seem to a
Frenchman a phenomenon so strange, as only to bd
accounted for by that latent madness which is generally
found in an English brain.

As to material prosperity we may say of the Indian

Continent what Earl Grey says of Ceylon. **^^

•

"Its native races are utterly incapable of governing themselves,
and yet they certainly would not submit to be ruled by the mere handful
of Europeans who have settled among them, if this small body were
unsupported by British power. The great wealth which within the last
few years has been created would be destroyed, and the most hopeless
anarchy would take the place of that security which now exists, and
under the shelter of which such promising signs of improvement are
'beginning to appear."

To throw up the task of governing the ancient
East, would be as weak as it would be wicked : we
should justly incur the contempt and execration of
civilized nations.

V.

IN the previous sections I have given my reasons for
believing, that in maintaining our present pos-
sessions, we should benefit all parties concerned : our-
selves by continuing our real greatness : the colonists,
by sharing with them the refinements of an old civil-
ization, and by saving them fi:om judges appointed for
a term by those whose causes are to come before them,
and firom gaol warders chosen firom drunken rowdies
who have been useful in elections.

48 ESSAY I.

K these advantages had to be purchased by damage
inflicted on other nations, we should have to consider
whether such damage overbalanced the good accom-
plished. K for example, we had kept up the old-
fashioned restrictions; if at the present moment we
shut out Prance and the United States from the
Canadian trade; if we required a preference to be
given to our merchants and manufactiu*ers in Australia
and New Zealand : if we maintained the regulations
of forty years ago, which excluded from India even
Enghshmen unprovided with a permission to reside
there; then, the advantages I have spoken of might
be dearly purchased. But the entire freedom we have
conceded to our colonies, and the liberal and kindly
manner in which we have dealt with the East, have
removed all such drawbacks.

As to the world at large too, I think it may be
shown that English predominance could not be spared.
That our relations with foreign nations might be con-
ceived as purer, juster, more unselfish, cannot be
denied : however much the people at home may desire
that we should do right, the performance of duties
must be entrusted to agents, to men like ourselves,
with affections and passions and vices. Yet to what
other nation could we wisely surrender our predomi-
nance ? To Prance, whose home government is stiU
unsettled ? To Germany, whose recent treatment of
Denmark shows how grasping she is ? To Russia, the
bugbear of the East ?

It cannot be denied that our foreign policy is wiser.

THE COLONIES, 49

juster than it was a century ago ; half a century ago ;
a quarter of a century ago : we may fairly ask to be
allowed to complete our improvement : we may say
that as "we work by wit and not by witchcraft,'*
dilatory time ought to be taken into account.

If the question were whether all nations should
abandon foreign possessions, and should henceforth
abstain from acquiring any, that would require serious
consideration. But if we retired from India, what
is to prevent Russia, France, Germany, the United
States, from sharing the Bast ? Canada, Australia^
New Zealand, might become the prizes of conquerors.
These possessions actually belong to us : they excite in
our hands less envy than they would in the hands of
other nations. The peace of the world requires us
to leave its map untouched.

Which of the great powers is ready for a self-denying
ordinance ? Not the United States, which covet Canada,
Cuba, Mexico : not Russia, which incessantly urges its
armies eastward, and desires to clutch Constantinople :
not France, which has lately in the East taken Cochin
China by violence, and appropriated New Caledonia,
an island we declined.

But to many persons there are other considerations
stiU more in Jesting.

We aU know what was the unhappy fate of the
gentle races found by the Spaniards in the other hemi-
sphere : one of the most disgraceful chapters in the
history of man, is that which teUs us how European
fanatics baptized hundreds of thousands of happy and

E

50 ESSAY I.

helpless people, and then condemned them to slavery
so severe and brutal that they died as if by pestilence.
Their only protection came from the mother country ;
and the most amazing thing in Mr. Helps's interesting
history,, is the care taken by the austere Philip II
(care sincere though vain), to compel the wild soldiery
to respect the rights of the natives.

The treatment in North America of the more warlike
tribes, has been far better : yet extermination follows.
Some fool or knave on one side or the other, is guilty
of violence : passions are aroused : the Indians avenge
their wrongs by bloodshed and outrage : farewell then
on both sides to moderation and justice. War to the
knife becomes the rule, and it can be restrained only
by a central power. It is the same with ourselves

in our colonies and in India : the natives are d d

niggers; potting black crows is a legitimate amuse-
ment.

In New Zealand we have a finer race to deal with ;
yet at times our sentiments are no less savage. Not
long ago the New Zealcmd EeraW^^ suggested that a
French officer once smoked a number of Algerians in
a cave, and that the natives had never troubled the
French since. " But England has become troubled
with qualms of conscience, or it may be a sentiment
about aboriginalism." There should be "a war of
vigorous measures ; it should be complete and final."
The settlers " should go the length of extermination."

I would recommend this passage to the attention
of a most respectable paper,^^^ which while conceding

THE OOLONIBS. 51

several years before, tfiati in the West Indies a strict
control was necessary on our part to protect the negro
race, maintained that at the Cape and in New Zealand
it was " at once wisest and most merciful to leave the
Colonists and the natives to fight out their contests
by themselves.'* This was urged on the ground that
all our efforts on behalf of the natives had failed : yet
quite recently I find another London journal contending
that we have succeeded too well,^^* for that our treat-
ment of the Maories has sometimes erred by excess
of kindness.

That colonial legislation requires careful watching

*

is easily seen. In August 1869, I find the following
account :

"The (3^) Cape Parliament has had a bill under discnssion regu-
lating the relations of masters and servants. It was proposed to inflict
on the servants flogging, imprisonment with hard labour, spare diet, and
BoHtary conflnement ; the masters were only to be fined. Considerable
indignation, we are told, was manifested by the European class (labourers
I suppose) likely to be aflected ; but it was explained that the measure
was intended to affect only Gaffres; legislation must be impartial —
look impartial, that is ; but it was trusted that the discretion of the
magistrates would protect Europeans. One legislator in the course of
the debate regretted that the farmers were not still allowed to shoot
down all thieving niggers."

The same savage spirit is found in the United.
States. In constructing that wonderful railroad which
completes the union of the Atlantic with the Pacific,
the Eed Indians inevitably resented the interference
with their hunting grounds. The white men were
intruders and enemies, deserving of scalping, torture,
and outrage. To the whites, who knew that the

52 ESSAY I.

world would not stand still in order to leave un-
disturbed the relation of the Red Indian and the
buffalo, the barbarous severities of the savages seemed
fitly punished by treachery and massacre. One of
the servants of the railway proposed in writing, that
the troublesome tribes should be exterminated, or so
reduced in numbers as to be rendered harmless.

"It is a singalar thing/' says a French author/^) "that in this
classical land of liberty, persons are not so scmpuloas as we are in
Europe: that violence, if it is found needinl, is not repalsiye, but is
openly practised."

The writer apparently does not know that in the
Atlantic cities, this unscrupulousness is condemned
as strongly as it is in Europe. He goes on to state
the ground of his hasty generalisation.

" I am of opinion," wrote the engineer Evans to Vice-President
Durante "that we must exterminate the Indians, or at least so far
reduce the number as to make them harmless. To accomplish this
we must war as savages do, and use means which lookers on will call
barbarous. I am persuaded that in the long run this course will
be the most charitable and the most humane."

Under the same circumstances, om* theories and
our sentiments might be much the same : but there-
fore the more necessary is a central controlling power,
in the hands of men who have not been corrupted by
the harsh struggles of life. New England, Pennsyl-
vania, Washington, are the natural controllers of the
United States : Great Britain is the natural controller
of New Zealand and the Cape. Let the older states
shut their eyes for a generation, and the Red Indians
would cease to be: let Great Britain connive for a

THE COLONIES. 53

generation, and the Maories would be annihilated, the
Caffi.es driven away or enslaved.

This word enslaved introduces another question
of the highest importance : whether slavery and the
slave trade would not raise their heads again, if we
abandoned our position as the arbiter between Europe
and remote nations.

It is one of the glories of Great Britain that during
the greater part of a century, a large philanthropic
party struggled without intermission to put an end to
the slave trade and to slavery itself. Sixty years
ago the English slave trade ceased; and from that
time we gradually induced other nations to forbid it.
After we had attained this end, we made great sacri-
fices to support the police of the seas : we kept up a
squadron on the West Coast of Africa, at a vast cost
of men sacrificed to the pestilential climate; we
encountered the hostility of other nations by enforcing
the " right of search : " we bore the sneers of the
world, who would not believe tis disinterested, but
steadily maintained that we were studying our own
interests. At last the old slave trade has almost
ceased, and under the new face which Cuba is assuming
we may hope that it will cease altogether.

Slavery itself, now the United States have done
with it, appears to be doomed. Cuba and the Brazils
can hardly continue it against America and England.

Now if slavery were an unnatural condition, handed
down to us from the middle ages, as a whimsical
result of feudalism, we should perhaps hear no more

54 ESSAY I.

of it. But unfortunately it is the most naturial Of all
conditions in early stages of social progress. Gibbon
Wakefield pointed out why it is so : he showed that
in the presence of illimitable land capable of cultiva-
tion, the great diflBculty of colonists is to keep
labourers continuously in their employment ; and that
therefore slavery came naturally, in as a means of
enabling capitaKsts to organize labour. A sugar
planter at the critical season may find himself deserted
by his hired men, who can easily earn a subsistence by
cultivating a plot of land. Even the manufacturers
in the northern states, we are told, lament that they
are perpetually at the mercy of their men, who can
always resort to that confounded land in the West.

There is always danger then in new colonies, of a
reestablishment of slavery, open or disguised. We
find in fact, that it does make its appearance fi:*om
time to time. I will give two examples.

The first occurred at the Cape, in the Transvaal
Kepublic, which is not an English settlement. In
June 1868, I meet with the following paragraphs.**^^

"The Ca/pe Argua says that the slave trade is carried on to a
frightfal extent in the Transvaal Republic, and that under the goise
of the apprenticeship system, which a/pprenUceship never ceases. Many
of the inhabitants of the Transvaal are opposed to these unlawful pro-
ceedings, and are anxious to place the country under British rule."

The subject came before the Enghsh House of
Commons at the opening of our next Parliament.

** Mr. B. Fowler drew attention to the systematic enslavement of
Kaffir children by the Boers of the Transvaal Eepublic ; and Mr. Monsell,
in regretfully admitting the truth of the statements, referred to Mr.

THE COLONIES, 65

Ohesson's able pamphlet on the subject, in which it was suggested that
moral pressure would probably be sufficient to put a stop to the
shameful traffic, and assured the House that the Government were
willing to do all they could in that direction."

I sincerely hope that moral pressure may prove
sufficient. But I am convinced that if we left our
Cape settlements entirely to themselves, any moral
pressure they could exercise, would be despised or
resented by the Transvaal Eepubhc. It is the recol-
lection of the mother country in the backgroimd which
gives force to such pressure : in the Reform Bill
agitation of forty years ago, it was a common saying,
that moral force was the shadow of physical force.

I fear indeed, that instead of pressing reform on
the Transvaal Boers, the unscrupulous men among
our colonists would be more likely to imitate them.
In one of our Austrahan colonies, Queensland, some-
thing too like slavery has actually come into being
of late.

So lately as May to August 1869, these passages
appeared :

'' The Stcmdard^^) says that the slave trade, crushed in America,
seems on the point of reviving in Australia, owing to the importation of
Fol3naesian natives into Queensland, to work the sugar plantations
there. This trade is carried on hj ship captains, who are nominally
'emigration agents,' but in reality nothing better than open and
atrocious kidnappers. Their practice is to touch at some island where
the inhabitants are uncivilized, and cannot speak English, so that they
cannot afterwards make known their wrongs ; to decoy them on board
under some pretence or other, and then, after driving or cajoling them
below decks, to set sail at once. As many as 90 to 110 have been taken
by one vessel in a voyage. In the latter instance 20 out of the 110 died
before reaching land. These poor people are certainly sold in some way
or other, for one captain declared openly that he had lost over £100 by

56 ESSAY I.

the escape of some islanders. Horrible cmelties are perpetrated, as
may perhaps be supposed. Natarally enongh, a sangainary retaliation
is feared. However, as the missionaries and colonial bishops, backed
by an influential section of the colonists and by the gpreater part of the
press, are vigorously stirring in the matter, it is to be hoped that before
long either the scandal will be put down, or the serious attention of
the Home Government may be drawn to it."

This also came before our House of Commons. I
find on the 28th June, 1869 :

" Mr. Taylor next drew attention to the importation of South Sea
Islanders into Queensland, which he denounced as a regular slave
trade, the natives being inveigled away or kidnapped by force. Mr.
Monselly admitting that there had been a revival of the slave trade
in Samoa and Feejee, contended that the importation of labour into
Queensland was placed under special regulations and restrictions for
the protection of immigrants. He acknowledged, however, that the
regulations were not sufficient ; a serious omission was the examination
of vessels by emigration agents. The subject had engaged the earnest
attention of the Colonial Office, and strong injunctions had been sent
to the Governor of Queensland to do all in his power to secure proper
treatment for the immigrants. Mr. Kinnaird, Mr. B. N. Fowler, and
Admiral Erskine, insisted that matters were much worse than the
Under Secretary tried to make them appear, that immigrants were in
fact regarded as slaves and subjected to very cruel usage by their
masters. Mr. Adderley took the official side of the question, and
deprecated any interference with the freedom of the labour market
by a fallacious cry of slave trade."

If any reader doubts what the real nature of the
trade is, let him turn to the Daily News^^^ of 10th
August and 10th December, 1869 ; and he will there
find enough to remove his scepticism.

On the 25th of May 1869, Captain Howell of the
Young Australian, was put on his trial, together with
one of his crew, charged with the capital ofience of
murdering two natives, who found themselves on board
his vessel, and violently resisted his authority. Captain

THIS COLONIES. 57

Howell, who was a htunane man, if his witnesses are
to be credited, regarded the armed resistance of the
natives as a mutiny, and maintained his right to quell
euch mutiny by force : the prosecutor contended that
the resisting natives could not have been guilty of
mutiny because they were not legally subject to the
captain's authority ; and that their resistance was even
perfectly lawfiil, as it took place in defence of their
Hberty, of which they had been violently deprived.

For the prosecution much native evidence was
tendered, but it was objected to on the groimd that
the witnesses were not Christians, and not suflSciently
instructed to understand the force of an oath.

"A baptised Polynesian, named Josiah, testified that he was in
one of two boats, in which a company from the ship went to land on the
island. As they were rowing towards the shore, three natives were
seen in a canoe, and the order was given to cut them off. The natives,
seeing they were pursued, jumped into the sea and made for the shore,
but were all caught, taken on board the Yowag AustraUcm, and sent down
into the hold. No longer intimidated there by the firearms which had
held them in check on board the ship's boats, they made a fight for their
liberties, atid were killed in the unequal struggle. This evidence was
fully confirmed, and the counsel for the prisoners failed to upset it."

The captain and his man were found guilty of
murder, but the jury strongly recommended them to

This is not the only known instance. The Daily
News, in the same article, tells us that early in the year
1869, the schooner Daphne of Melbourne, entered the
port of Levuka, Fiji, where fortunately she encountered
H.M.S. BosariOy who overhauled her. On board the
Daphne were found a hundred natives huddled together,

58 ESSAT I.

without anyone who understood their language. It
was pretended that these naked savages had engaged
themselves as emigrant labourers ; but Captain Palmer
of the Bosario seized the Daphne as a slaver, and set
the natives free.

I am much disposed to beUeve what we are told :
that these are not isolated cases, but that a practice
has sprung up of setting sail on piratical adventures,
and of carrying to certain colonies captured slaves
called by the euphemistic name of emigrant labourers.
Can we possibly make up our minds to abandon the
task we have so long performed: or to render that
task more difficult by letting go the hold we still
possess on distant colonies? How deeply should we
hereafter regret our pusillanimity, if after giving up
our South Sea possessions, we should find some of
them banded together against us to carry on a slave
trade, such as that of Cuba, or formerly of Brazil !

As I have said before : the question is not whether
aU European nations should agree to abandon their
present foreign possessions, and to abstain from farther
annexations ; it is whether Great Britain alone should
adopt this course. Let us set aside Eussia and the
United States, the two giants which are constantly
gathering up fragments of the eastern or western
world. France itself is as greedy of distant provinces
as we were in our heroic days. The following passage
from the Bevue des deux Mondes,^^^ expresses what
seems to me the prevailing sentiment of educated
Prance.

THE COLONIES. 59

" If it is easy for theorists to attack the colonial system by com-
paring the cost with the profit, men called to the head of a great
nation, to whatever economical school they belong, are driven by
irresistible pressure to commit those generous prodigalities which do
honour to the youth of nations, and profit their maturity. Greece
colonized Asia Minor, Sicily, and Italy; Bome annexed the world by
manners as well as by arms ; and England would now be a nation of
the third order, if the intrepid Anglo- Saxon race which occupies two
continents, had carried out the recent half-serious theory of isolation.
The doctrine of everyone to himself and everyone for himself, is in
radical contradiction to the genius of France, to whom expansion is a
necessity. Numerous as have been her failures in colonization, her
faith has fortunately survived her deceptions. It is with unanimous
applause that the French Gk)vemment has by a victory opened for us
the gates of the Celestial Empire; and it justly reckoned on the appro-
bation of all politicians when it planted the national flag between India
and Japan at the mouth of one of the greatest watercourses of Upper
Asia. The Frenchman who arrives from Europe, afber having seen
Perim and Malacca, touched at Aden, at Fointe de Gralles, at Sincapore,
beholds with unspeakable joy the flag which waves at the summit of
Cape St. Jacques, sheltering three millions of men, who are either our
subjects or under our protection, whose rights, manners, and interests
we have respected, while we have enlarged the horizon of all.

" I do not propose in this place to explain the condition of Cochin
China, nor to point out its future, as it appears to everyone who knows
the fertility of the country and the happy aptitudes of the natives.
This task has been already acccomplished : but our possessions have an
addition in Cambogia, the importance of which is far less understood.
The brilliant success of Admiral Eigault de Genouilly at Touranne,
the happy inspiration which conducted him to Saigon, the decisive
victory gained by Admiral Chamer at Kihoa, all these exploits are
henceforward consigned to our military annals, and are not its least
glorious pages. But the world is generally ignorant of the way in which
we acquired Cambogia, the necessary complement of a territory to the
security of which it was necessary."

The periodical from which this passage is taken,
represents the highest intellect of France, and may
generally be taken as the exponent of the tone and
sentiments of the ablest and wisest Frenchmen. Now
the exultant spirit on the acquisition of this little

60 ESSAY I.

colony, the rant about glory on a victory over miserable
Asiatics, must convince ns that if we retire from the
stage of colonization, onr nearest neighbours will at
once take our place.

I ask the friends of aborigines and the enemies of
slavery, whether they can look with hope at the sub-
stitution of France for England as the great colonizing
power. The French, you will say, are a kindhearted
people: no doubt they are. They are flexible, and
easily adapt themselves to new habits : so it is said,
though their ilL success in colonization suggests a doubt.
However, let their kindness and flexibility be what you
please, they have not had our long training in the
philanthropy which protects the distant oppressed.
We have done abroad many harsh and cruel things :
but we have a party always ready to cry for retribu-
tion : a party strong in tradition, ready with the
names of Clarkson and Wilberforce to conjure up a
storm agauist evildoers : a party strong in the Society
of Friends, and in the middle classes of society at
large. Slavery and the Slave Trade, Oppression of
Aborigines, are odious spectres we have fought for a
century, in spite of European sneers and calumny:
spectres we have vanquished and are ready to vanquish
again. The French have yet to learn the lessons we
know so well : shall we commit to their hands a task
we can perform and they cannot ?

Other nations share these French sentiments, and
do not understand the scruples felt by Englishmen.
We say that we are in possession of India : that we

THE COLONIES. 61

much fear we had at first no right to be there : but
that being there, the best thing we can now do is to
govern the country in such a way as to promote the
present wellbeing and future civilization of the natives.
Show us that we fail in this task and we will retire.
Continental public writers taJce a moi^ peremptory
tone : as for instance Mommsen in his History of Borne.
An Enghsh critic^^^^ referring to Csesar and his war in
Gaul, says that it is one of Dr. Mommsen' s many
merits that he looks at those great events in the light
of a higher philosophy. After boldly laying down the
right of a State to absorb neighbours still in their
nonage (which he illustrated by approving the British
conquest of India), he goes on:

"The Roman aristocracy had accomplished the preliminary con-
dition required for this task (of Caesar's) — the union of Italy; the task
itself it never solved, but always regarded the extra-Italian conquests
either as simply a necessary evil, or as a fiscal possession virtually
beyond the pale of the State. It is the imperishable glory of the
Roman democracy or monarchy — ^for the two coincide — to have correctly
apprehended and vigorously realized this its highest destination. . . .
Though the subjugation of the West was for Csdsar so far a means to
an end that he laid the foundations of his later height of power in the
Transalpine wars, U is ths special privilege of the statesman of genius
iluxt Ms meams themsehes a/re ends in, their tv/m. . . . There was a
direct political necessity for Rome to meet the perpetually threatened
invasion of the Germans thus early beyond the Alps. . . . But even
this important object was not the highest and ultimate reason for which
Gaul was conquered by Caasar. . . . The Italian homes had become
too narrow. ... It was a brilliant idea, a grand hope, which led
Caesar over the Alps — the idea and the confident expectation that he
should gain there, for his fellow burgesses, a new boundless home, and
regenerate the State a second time, by placing it on a broader basis."

Mommsen I believe, is of that Grerman school
which worships might, force, success ; and bows down

62 ESSAY I*

before heroes. The doctrine set forth 'in the passage
I have quoted is repugnant to the plain sense of justice
of EngUshmen, as it is no doubt to that of many
Germans. We do not beUeve that Russia, Austria, and
Prussia, had a right to partition Poland because its
constitution was chaotic : nor that Austria would now
have a right to seize Roumania because that new
country is in its nonage: nor that Hungary could
justly take Moldavia and Bosnia because they are
vassals of the Crescent.

Let us beware of entrusting the high poKce of the
world to those among whom such sentiments of inter-
national justice are tolerated. The French and the
Germans have been distanced in the race of greatness :
they are nationally greedy for empire: they mould
their sentiments according to their desires. The
English are satiated with success : their possessions
are almost a trouble to them: they can aflford to
abstain from ftirther increase, and can even desire a
diminution. They have nothing to gain by injustice ;
their sentiments are unwarped by greed ; they are the
natural arbiters of the world. The task is one they
must not shrink from, as they desire the well-being of
the human race, and value their own continued
greatness.

THE COLONIES. 63

VI.

THE defence of existing institutions labours at present
under a great disadvantage. We have lived in a
period of change during half a century. A new liberal
foreign and colonial policy was begun by Canning
and his Mends : the same party, under the inspiration
of Huskisson, adopted the pohcy of free trade ; which
the war with France had prevented Pitt from carryiug
out, and which was to be completed by Sir R. Peel,
long after Canning and Huskisson had disappeared*
The test and corporation acts have been aboHshed:
Roman Catholics have been admitted to Parhament
and to high ofl&ce : even the Jews have been received
as brethren. The great manufacturing towns have
got some share of representation: votes have been
given to all classes : the baUot is on the point of being
granted.

To young enthusiasts it seems that no wished for
change need be despaired of: to old conservatives,
who have been beaten in so many political campaigns,
weariness and despondency have taken the place of hope :
and they say that with sufficient popular agitation any
absurdity may gain acceptance.

, The Colonies are doomed, say the young men;
they wiU go the way of test acts and protection : the
colonies are doomed, say the hopeless conservatives;
the young „en »re agitata agist them.

64 ESSAT I.

It is well to recollect some particulars of our
history which have sUpped out of sight, and which may
teach us that popular agitation, if frequently successful,
frequently also fails.

First, as to social reforms. All of us concede that
drunkenness among many, and excessive drinking
among still more, are answerable for a great part of
the vice, misery and poverty of the world : since the
time of Father Matthew, the teetotallers have agitated
incessantly and dogmatically for legislative interference;
for Sunday closing of taverns, for altogether prohibiting
the retailing of hquors, for permitting towns to forcibly
close their taverns. : they have not succeeded, and seem
even to lose the ground which in America they had
gained.

Then as to our financial policy. I am old enough
to remember the flourishing days of Cobbett and
Attwood: when the one applied all the popularity
of his Political Register and all the resources of his
vigorous English, to induce his countrymen to repu-
diate the National Debt : when the other wielded the
Political Union half mad with the carrying of the
Reform Bill, as an instrument for degrading the cur-
rency. The National Debt remains, and the currency
has not been degraded : nay, no other national debt
has so high a credit, no other currency is so jealously
guarded.

Some political agitations have failed just as igno-
miniously. Among the Chartists of twenty to thirty
years ago, there were certain demands to be absolutely

THE COLONIES. 65

insisted on: two of the five points were Triennial
Parliaments, and Payment of Members. The classes
who constituted the Chartists are now intrusted with
votes. Where is the cry for Triennial Parliaments
and Payment of Members ? Before the Crimean war,
the Peace Society was an important body, and as if
its clamour was not loud enough at home, sent a
deputation to Russia, to mislead the Czar into the base-
less opinion that England would not fight. Where is
now the once popular Peace Society?

TeetotaUism, repudiation of the National Debt,
degradation of the currency, triennial parliaments, pay-
ment of members, abolition of war, have all been
the subject of popular agitation, and none have been
carried.

Let young enthusiasts moderate their ardour; let
weary conservatives regain hope: we are not at the
mercy of agitators : men cannot carry measures merely
by the expenditure of a given quantity of talk and
printing. Let the Mends of the colonies at home take
heart to oppose agitation to agitation : let the fi:ienda
of the mother country abroad take heart, and be assured
that no amoimt of breath and paper will make us
willingly abdicate our greatness.

My own faith in my conclusions is far more likely
to be disturbed, by the counter authority of two emi-
nent thinkers, the one French, the other English.
I wonder that among professors and publicists who
have written against keeping the colonies, this support
fi:om authority has, so far as I know, been neglected.

p

66 < ESSAT I.

The TVenchman was Turgot, the greatest of the
Economists, the disciples of Quesnay and Gonmay,

In 1776, early in the dispute between England and
her American plantations, Turgot *^^ was formally con-
sulted as to the policy which France and Spain ought
to adopt : whether they ought or not to interfere. He
discussed the question in writing, and came to the
conclusion that France and Spain ought not to inter-
fere; no, not even if Great Britain was likely to be
victorious. For, said he, if England should succeed
in conquering and enslaving her colonies, her hands
would be so ftdl of the continual work necessary to
hold them, that this would furnish the. other great
powers with the strongest guarantee against any fiirther
British enterprise.

Turgot took the opportunity of discussing the
colonial system, and of showing, as Adam Smith did
in his great work published the same year, how the
principles of free trade condemned the system.

" Pmdent and fortunate will be tliat nation wliich is the first to
adapt its policy to recent circumstances ; which consents to regard its
colonies, not as subjects of the metropolis, but as allied provinces!
Prudent and fortunate will be that nation which is the first convinced
that all commercial policy consists in employing its soil in the manner
most advantageous to the owners, its hands in the manner most
advantageous to the labourers When the entire separa-
tion of America has forced the world to recognise this truth, and has
Corrected European commercial jealousies, there will be one great
cause of war the less ; and one cannot but desire an event so favourable
to humanity."

The English writer to whom I have referred, is
Jeremy Bentham ; than whom perhaps, no modem writer

THE COLONIES. 67

has done more to mould the legislation and policy of
a great country. Bentham's " Emancipate your
Colonies," addressed to the French National Con-
Tention, is well known. Elsewhere,*^^ he takes the
same tone.

" To confess the truth, I never could bring myself to see any real
advantage derived by the mother country, from anything that ever
bore the name of a Colowy. It does not appear to me, that any instance
ever did exist, in which any expense bestowed by government in the
planting or conquering of a colony was really repaid. The goods
produced by the inhabitants of such new colony cannot be had by the
inhabitants of the mother country without being paid for : and &om
other countries, or the mother country itself, goods to equal value may,
without any such additional expense, as that of founding, maintaining,
and protecting a colony, be had upon the same terms."

Such are the two great authorities I have men-
tioned. As to Bentham, he merely refuted the
protectionist doctrine by which the founding and
marntaining colonies was defended. He neglected all
other considerations ; having his mind fall at the time,
of arguments to prove the superiority of his Panopticon
gaol as compared with a penal settlement. Afterwards,
when that longlived Panopticon incubus ceased to
oppress him, other elements of the colonizing question
presented themselves ; and as Gibbon Wakefield teUs us,
Bentham recanted his early opinions, and was convinced
that to found and maintain colonies might be beneficial.

Turgot's arguments again, are mostly directed
against the doctrines of monopoly and protection. He
would convert the colonies into allied provinces. If
he had lived and retained his mental vigour tiU the
present day, he would very likely have regarded as

68 ESSAY I.

allied proyinces, colonies like Canada, Australia, and
New Zealand ; aU enjoying state rights, but subject on
matters of imperial interest, to the federal authority of
the Imperial Parhament. No doubt also, his opinions
as to the advantages of intimate alliance would have
been greatly strengthened, by the invention and adop-
tion of steamers, railroads, and electric telegraphs;
which have made Quebec more accessible to Londoners
than Belfast was a hundred years ago.

The proposal to strengthen the alliance between
Grreat Britain and her dependencies, has lately received
considerable attention. Happily, it is from the colonies
that the cry for increased cordiality has come : if it
had begun here, it might have been suspected of
betraying a lust of predominance : if we had talked of
an Imperial League, we might have provoked the
estabhshment of a Colonial League.

The success of the proposal must depend mainly
on the degree of attachment between the parent and
the ojBEspring. If there is real and deep aflfection on
both sides, an intimate alliance wiU not be difl&cult.
Now, I am quite certain that Great Britain is warmly
attached to those who have carried her name, her
language, her manners, and her greatness, through the
world. If Canada left us, we should bid her God
speed, but we should feel humiUated by the secession :
the loss of Austraha and New Zealand would be hard
to bear : and if any chance should deprive us of India,
we should feel that national mourning would be our
fit condition: if all these possessions failed us, we

THB COLONIES. 69

could only say as Adam Smith did on a similar occa-
sion, that we must endeavour to accommodate our
future views and designs to the real mediocrity of our
circumstances.

Still, we have no heart to hold our colonies against
their will: as soon as they are fit for independence,
let them go if they desire to do so. Do they desire
it? Do they wish to renounce their birthright?

At present, the evidence points to the opposite
conclusion. Gibbon Wakefield wrote before, we had
made those wonderful concessions of independent legis-
latures, which have left the colonies nothing to desire
as to self-government. He hated the Colonial Ofl&ce,
and was under a temptation to represent that its mis-
conduct was exhausting the patience of the colonists,
just as the blundering of a century ago did exhaust
the patience of the Americans.^^* Yet Wakefield says :

''The peculiarity of Colonies is their attachment to the mother
country. Without having lived in a colony— or at any rate, without
having a really intimate acquaintance with colonies, which only a very few
people in the mother country have or can have — ^it is difficult to conceive
the intensity of colonial loyalty to the empire. In the colonies of
England, at any rate, the feeling of love towards England, and of pride
in belonging to her empire, is more than a sentiment ; it is a sort of
passion which all the colonists feel, except the Milesian-Irish emigrants.
I have often been unable to help smiling at the exhibition of it. In what
it originates I cannot say."

This was written a generation ago. But very lately,
another observer. Sir George Grey, spoke in the same
style.

"He said (35) he was unable to understand a policy which insisted
on keeping Ireland bound to the empire against the will of the Irish,

70 ESSAY I.

while it said to New Zealand, We are willing to cut yon off if yon like to
go. He had no hesitation in saying that thronghont the British do-
minions there was an amount of respect for the Qneen which no language
could describe, and that to be seyered from her rule would strike sorrow
into all their hearts.*'

Some recent proceedings prove the truth of these
assertions, and illustrate them strangely. I say nothing
of the reception of Prince Arthur in Nova Scotia,
because that might be only loud lip-loyalty. But the
conduct of certain colonies on a graver occasion,
has far more significance. In the spring of 1868, the
Duke of Edinburgh, on a visit to Australia, was dehb-
erately shot by a traitor. The angry excitement which
followed, was astounding. Even New Zealand, on
hearing of the act, broke into a fervour of loyalty,^*'
The Sunday after the news arrived, the National
Anthem was sung after morning service in every
church and chapel of every denomination, and monster
indignation meetings were held in all the towns to
demonstrate their detestation of the outrage.

But New South Wales was frenzied. The London
Spectator^^^ made these comments.

" Within five days of the atrocious and cowardly attempt on Prince
Al&ed's life, the two Houses of Legislature passed in one night, through
all its stages, a Bill which received the sanction provisionally equivalent
to a Boyal assent the next morning. That legislative act we can call by
no other name than one of violent and alarming political delirium.
. . . . It provides that any one proposing a 'peaceful and fri&ndby
sepanration of these colonies from the British Grown, .... shall he
guilty of fdowy, and be liable to penal servitude for life, or for any term
not leas tham> seven yea/rs*'

I cannot doubt then, the truth of the assertions
made by Gibbon Wakefield and Sir George Grey: I

THE COLONIES. 71

must believe that ardent and unfaltering as is loyalty
at home, distance of five or ten thousand miles adds
enchantment to the sentiment.

With such ardent attachment on the part of the
offspring, it will be strange indeed if a brutal AvTi-aTopy^^^^
should move the mother country to thrust them out
of her nest. On that point however, I have no
fear.

What form our relations to the colonies will take,
I do not presume to conjecture. At some recent
meetings in London, the following propositions were
proposed for discussion, and exhibit a reasonable view
of the case as it now stands.

" 1. That the colonies are a source of great commercial and social
advantage to the parent country, and largely contribute to the influence
and greatness of the empire.

2. That on the other hand, the rights of Imperial citizenship.
Imperial siipervision, vnjlaence, and exam'plef and Imperial commerce
and resources, promote all the best interests of the colonies ; and that
they, on their part, are not wanting in a loyal appreciation of their
beneficial relationship.

3. That the practical independence of a representative and responsible
local government, latterly conceded to each of the principal colonies
alike at their own instance, and with the ready concurrence of the
Imperial authorities, was most certainly never intended to weaken the
connection with the parent State, but, on the contrary, to strengthen it
by the increased loyalty and contentment arising from a more suitable
political condition: and that in this respect this judicious policy has
been attended with complete success.

4. That under this new system it is only equitable that these so
self-governed colonies should defrouy entirely their own respective choA'ges;
provided always that claims and responsibilities, if any, attaching to
the preceding regime be first satisfactorily disposed of; and that this
financial independence, has in fact, with very few exceptions, which it
may be hoped are only temporarily such, either been already completely
attained, or is just on the eve of attainment."

72 ESSAY I.

There follow four other propositions, which are
not of such general and permanent interest.

Unfortunately, the gentlemen who, with the best
intentions, proposed and discussed these resolutions,
were altogether without authority from the Colonists
whom they seemed to represent. We have since
learned that the report of their proceedings has caused
much irritation in Australia: irritation, happily, not
against the Grovemment or people of Great Britain,
but against the oflB.cious members of a self-constituted
association.

As to the possibility of any strengthening of the
ties between us, it would be rash to express an opinion.
Portugal^*'^ admits to its parhament a deputy from
India: Spain admits deputies from Cuba and Porto
Rico. Should we gain anything by imitating this
poHcy, and issuing writs to Canada, the West Indies,
AustraUa, and India? The Times talks of a federaj
fleet and army. These proposals appear to imply
questions of imperial taxation, our bugbear since the
last century, when it cost us a colonial war ending in
humiliation.

In this as in all legislation, we shall doubtless feel
our way cautiously ; groping in the dark, until some
happy accident or wise induction furnishes a ray to
guide us.

THJfi COLONIES. 73

VII.

I HAVE now assigned the grounds of my opinions :
opinions formed after many years' careful weighing
of the reasoning and declamation of able and consci-
entious opponents: opinions as to the soundness of
which, I am free from those doubts which often beset
one on topics incapable of demonstration.

I know that I have with me the hearts of Great
Britain, when I set the greatness of the country far
above Chancellors' Budgets and Board of Trade Re-
turns : I am certain that Englishmen and Scotchmen
and many Irishmen, would account it an ignominious
bargain, to give our foreign possessions in exchange
for a saving of an annual milUon or two of taxes,
or for an annual increase of a few miUions in our
commerce.

Epicurean apathy is not the vice of our islands :
our ungenial chmate, our vigorous constitutions, our
athletic habits, our traditional Puritanism, make timid
prudence repugnant to us. Priests and scholars may
preach up the virtues of quietude and asceticism :
when there comes a time for action, priests and scholars
preach in vain : let the pulpit and the college talk on ;
we will act.

Modern refinement has not made sybarites of us.
We have indeed abandoned oilr aggressive spirit : we
are slow to enter into a quarrel, but being in, we warn

74 ESSAY !•

our enemies to beware of us : we will rob no country
of its patrimony, but tliat must be an audacious people
which dares to lay a finger on ours.

Having this engrained hardihood of character, is it
conceivable that after the toilsome struggle of cen-
turies, we should spontaneously abandon our empire,
narrow our boundaries, and confine ourselves within
the little islands in which we live? We see the
Eastern and Western Giants growing daily; and
proving that by the help of steam and electricity, a
head may guide a body a hundred times as great as
could formerly be controlled : is this the time for us
to retire into ourselves, and to provoke the amazement,
the pity, and the derision of Europe ?

We are not so degenerate as to be indiflTerent to
the extension of our race, of our language, of our
manners. Modem Aryans, issuing, not firom the depths
of Asia, but from the western verge of Europe, we
see our destiny to peacefiilly transform the world : to
people two continents ; and perhaps to rescue a third
from castes, from idols, from degrading and blood-
stained superstitions.

Responsibilities follow: struggles with diflGlculties ;
dangers to be confronted; anxieties to be borne. So
much the better : it is only by incurring responsi-
bilities, by struggling with difficulties, by confronting
dangers, by bearing anxieties, that men and nations
continue great : if like cowards we recoil from these,
we shrink into insignificance.

History indeed, has taught us a valuable lesson.

THE COLONIES. 75

Our fathers vainly put out all their force to crush
their rebellious colonists, whom they had teased into
insurrection. We say to their neighbours, the Cana-
dians and Nova Scotians and islanders of their coasts :
form yourselves into a great Dominion; and then, if
you desire independence, take it ; if you prefer annex-
ation to the United States, have it: if you do not
value your birthright, if you are tired of being BngHsh-
men, if you long for the stir and corruption of Presi-
dential elections, if you expect more ready and certain
justice from judges appointed by the people, have your
will, we will not coerce you.
. We let the Ionian Islands go : I hope we shall do
the same with Gibraltar, if after mature dehberation
we can see sufficient cause. The matter concerns, not
us alone, but aU the maritime powers. To us it is a
matter of patriotic pride, as well as of naval security :
to them, of naval security alone. Let us have an in-
quiry in the face of Europe, and invite witnesses of
aU nations. It might turn out that just as Europe
intrusted the Ionian Islands to us, as the nation least
likely to abuse the charge, so certain countries, I wiU not
say France, but Eussia, Austria, Prussia, the United
States, might rather see the key of the Mediterranean
in our keeping, than in that of Spain, which might
lose it in the first struggle. I earnestly wish that
we may find ourselves able without injustice to hold
that rock : the trophy of former victorious endurance ;
a memorable example to us and our children. As
to the suggestion of our abandoning it lest it should

76 ESSAY I.

be taken from us, tlie adviser of sucli pusiUanimity
should be hooted down.

I have said that if a national saving of a few
millions, and an important extension of commerce,
were set together on one side, and the maintenance of
our greatness were set on the other, the people would
not hesitate to prefer the national greatness ; just as
the people had no hesitation in spendiag a hundred
millions and paying an oppressive income-tax, rather
than see our mflitary reputation tarnished in the
Crimea. But to me it seems demonstrable that Kttle
permanent expenditure is required ; since the colonies
acknowledge -that, except in a few trifling and tempo-
rary cases, they are bound to pay aU their own expenses.
But I go much fiirther : I maintain that our foreign
possessions are of great pecuniary advantage to us ; in
extending our commerce, in promoting our emigration,
ia supplying us with a field for the employment of our
many educated men otherwise condemned to idle-
ness. I am convinced that to abandon New Zealand^
Australia, India, would impoverish us greatly.

The colonists themselves do not wish to leave us.
I have shown how, formerly. Gibbon Wakefield witness-
ing their overpassionate and inexplicable attachment
to the mother country, had often to suppress a smile.
SiQce that experience, an end has been put to the old
grievances inflicted by the Colonial Ofl&ce ; to the for-
mahties and delays and whims which exasperated our
distant fellow-subjects : all possible independence has
been conferred : gratitude has taken the place of irrita-

THE COLONIES. 77

tion : even to propose a separation was hastily made^
in one colony, a highly penal oflFence.

Most persons agree that we cannot cut the tie
between us without the consent of both parties. It
would indeed, be cruelly inconsiderate to take from
our best friends without their consent, the benefits of
the present organization: to reftise to supply them
with a Doge ; to leave them to elect their judges by
universal suffrage, or to appoint as gaol warders the
coarse and unprincipled partizans of the winning party.
So long as they continue Englishmen, they will retain
their noble loyalty to a distant island, and their
elevating pride in sharing the historical renown of a
great country : they will desire to add the gentleness
and refinement of an old civilization, to the stir and
enterprise of a new society* If we cast them off,
there may prevail unchecked the coarse vices of small
and new republics : the rude dialect, the slovenly ad-
ministration, the bowieknife and revolver, the vigilance
committee, and Lynch law.

As to India, we stand in the place of the Great
Mogul : but with higher aims, authority more undis-
puted, a better organization. We are conquerors ; but
India has always been a prey to conquerors. We dis-
placed the successors of Aurungzebe : we overturned
the throne of Hyder Ali and Tippoo Saib : we over-
threw the vast hosts of Holkar and Scindiah : we
conquered the conquerors. According to the candid
testimony of Frenchmen, our rule is a blessing to the
people; and if we err, it is not through a lust of

78 ESSAY I.

annexation, but in still leaving a single native prince
to reign and misgovern.

K we give up India to the Indians, there follows
the anarchy of the last century: daring freebooters
rising to be princes; hill tribes annually desolating
the plains : the Mahometans forcing on the Hindoos,
conversion, tribute, or the sword. Europe has long re-
sounded with the groans of Asiatic Christians oppressed
by the Turks: our retirement from India would be
followed by the groans of Hindoos oppressed by the
Moslem.

Once more: are we ready to abandon our honourable
and long continued crusade against slavery and oppres-
sion? Shall we leave the Cape Europeans to shoot
down the CaflTres ? the Jamaica whites to hang, draw,
and quarter the men of colour? the Hindoos and
Mahometans to join in grinding down the Santals?
the Boers to enslave their neighbours ? the Queensland
planters to cajole, kidnap, and murder the Polynesians ?

ff we have arrived at that stage in our national hfe,
when we prefer repose to greatness, quiet enjoyment
to noble duties : if we have fallen into Epicurean apathy,
not through the pressure of foreign rule or domestic
anarchy, but through the weariness and satiety of
success : then we shall find that the " canker of a long
peace " has been our ruin : and we may earnestly pray
for another Louis XIV, or another Napoleon I, to
alarm and harass us into activity and health.

But if, as I beUeve, we are not so corrupted : if
the nation is henceforth to be guided by men brought

THE COLONIES. 79

up to labour and endurance, and not by loungers and
carpet knigbts : if a generous sympathy witb the weak
is to be the mainspring of our foreign policy: if while
we covet nothing for ourselves, we insist that no high
handed injustice shall be committed by others : if we
are resolved to apply our maritime predominance to
prevent the ruffians and pirates of the world from
oppressing and enslaving their neighbours: then we
shall certainly rally to the cry. Hold fast your Colonies.

WILLIAM LUCAS SARGANT.

80 ESSAY I.

NOTES.

(i> Beyne des denz Mondes, 64, 678.

^2) M. Martha, Iiucrhce, 8.

(3) Eev. d. d. Mondes, 82, 216.

(*) lb., 84, 71.

(6) Statistical Jonrnal, 32, 294.

(6) Merivale, Colonization, 248: and Stat. Jour., 32, 297.

(7) PaU MaU Gazette, Jan. 19, 1867, 6.

(8) lb., Aug. 24, 6.

<*) The Orange Biver Territory was assumed by us in 1848, and aban-
doned in 1854. See Forsyth, Gases and Opinions, 1869, p. 185.

<l®) International Policy, pp. 23 & 212 note. Grant Duff, Studies in
European Politics, 1866, 57.

(^) Earl Grey on Colonies, 2, 180.

(12) Pall M. Gaz., 15 Dec, 1868, 12.

<13) Eev. d. d. Mondes, 70, 684-5.

(14) Edin. Eev., July, 1869, 72.

(15) Eev. d. d. Mondes, 70, 674.
(i«) lb., 74, 940.

(17) PaU M. Gaz., 12 Dec., 1868, 10.

(18) Eev. d. d. Mondes, 80, 1066.
(i») PaU M. Gaz., 29 July, 1869, 4.

(20) Earl Grey, 1, 14.

(21) PaU M. Gaz., 2 Sept., 1868, 1.

(22) Economist, 1153, p. 1173.

(23) PaU M. Gaz., 24 May, 1869, 1.

(24) lb., 21 Aug., 1869, 6.

(26) Eev. d. d. Mondes, 84, 35.

(26) PaU M. Gaz., 26 June, 1868, 6 : 20 Feb., 1869, 2.

(27) lb., 14 Dec, 1868, 2-3: 20 May, 1869, 3: 29 June, 1869, 2.

(28) Daily News, 10 Aug. and 10 Dec, 1869.

(2») Compare the case, in 1845, of the Spanish pirates in the FeUddade :
Irving Annals, 82 and 88.

(30) Eev. d. d. Mondes, 79, 852.

(31) PaU M. Gaz., 30 Jan., 1867, 10.

(32) Turgot, Ed. 1844, II, 551, 556, 563.

(83) Bentham's Works, Parts 4, 408 : 3, 206 : Index, 21, Ixi.

(34) Edin. Eev. 93, 493.

(36) PaU M. Gaz., 2 Dec, 1869, 8.

(36) lb., 28 May, 1868, 6.

(37) Spectator, 23 May, 1868, 609.

(38) GUbert White's Natural History of Selbome, Ed. 1845, 216.
(39; Journal des Econom., Aug. 1867, 279.

ESSAY II.

OK THE

RELATION OF THE UNIVERSITIES
TO PRACTICAL LIFE.

A FEW montlis ago I was sitting at table with a
-^^ gentleman who had risen to great eminence in
his profession, when our conversation turned upon
the value of a University education for professional
men. My companion, happily unconscious of the
antecedents of his acquaintance, exclaimed fiercely,
" Send a young man to College 1 ruin him for
Hfe, Sir; he comes home again, ignorant, conceited,
idle; never will go through the drudgery of learning
a business — never. Sir, never. Take a lad away
from school early; set him to work; make a useful
member of society of him." This language, ad-
mirably characteristic of the real British bagman,
expressed with great terseness and vivacity a senti-
ment which I hear from one quarter or another

G

82 ESSAT II.

every day of my life. In fact, at a time when the
Universities are striving to sweep away every barrier
which hinders them from being really national institu-
tions, when they are putting forth every eflfort to raise
the tone of national education, and to attract within
their walls the rising generation of the great middle
class, few questions are more warmly debated in that
class, none more vehemently disputed, than the advan-
tage of a University training as an introduction to
practical life. And although much of the language
that one hears proceeds from an inabOity to recognize
any utility in a study unless it can be made directly
available for mere business purposes ; nevertheless, as
it seldom happens that a widely prevalent impression
is altogether destitute of truth, there may be something
in the objections that are urged that it will not be
politic for the Universities to ignore. I propose, there-
fore, in the present essay to consider some of these
objections, and to inquire in what manner they can
best be met; and I think the question may be very
fitly discussed by a member of a laborious profession,
who, indebted to his University for the best part of
whatever intellectual culture he may possess, has not
found that culture at all interfere with the actual busi-
ness of life, but has derived from it, in a thousand
ways, advantages he can never too gratefully acknow-
ledge.

It may be admitted at the outset that if a young
man is sent to college for the purpose of associating
with companions of good family, agreeable maimers.

THE UNIVERSITIES. 83

and no need for work, he will find the University a
charming place of residence, and every opportunity
afforded him for the gratification of his tastes ; and
when his term of study is completed and he is ready
to enter upon life, he wiU return possessed of many
mental and bodily accompUshments, and very little
predisposed to the irksome details of a business or
profession. Many men go to college for this very
training ; many others, sent with a widely different
object, bring back nothing else, and after having con-
sumed a large sum of money and the most precious
years of their life, return less adequately equipped for
the struggle that lies before them than if they had
remained away. The evil of this is so great, and its
effect in deterring parents from venturing upon the
hazardous experiment of sending their sons to college
so considerable, that one is tempted to inquire how
long it will be before the Universities take some strin-
gent measures to diminish the number of those orna-
mental members whose example is so attractive to the
rest. The remedy is a simple one, and merely consists
in exacting from every candidate for admission a much
larger amount of previous knowledge than is now
required.

" But," says one of the more intelligent of my
professional friends, "suppose I am willing to run
this risk ; suppose I have ftill confidence that my son
would throw himself heartily into the studies of the
place, what knowledge will he have acquired, when he
comes back to me, to counterbalance the immense

84 ESSAY II.

disadvantage of not having been put early to work?
If I take an apprentice with a view of making him
a first rate man of business, I must have hiTn at
sixteen, with his mind still plastic, subject to no
inteUectual influences that might render his occupa-
tion distasteful, prepared to devote the next five
years of his life to the drudgery of mastering a
quantity of minute and irksome details, possibly to
acquiring considerable manipulative dexterity, and at
twenty-one he will begin to earn his bread. I grant
you that he wiU probably be a bore in society, and
incapable of exerting the smallest influence for good
on the intellectual culture of mankind, but in this
age of competition look at the start he has got in
the great race of life i Now reverse the picture : he
is destined for college; he remains at school till he is
eighteen, perhaps nineteen; he comes into the ofl&ce
or counting house at twenty-one or twenty-two, far
less able than at an earher age to learn the details
of his business; and, notwithstanding the sums that
have been lavished on his education, before he can
begin to earn money, he is already a middle-aged
man. I am willing to forego much of the advantage
of an early start in business that my son may
become a well educated man: I cannot forego all.
What part of the knowledge that he gets at the
University will he find directly available for the prac-
tical purposes of life ? "

It may be urged, in answer to this language and
much of a Uke sort, that it is very hard that a youth.

THE UNIVEESITIES. 85

simply because he is destined for business, should be
debarred from the advantage of the best education that
can be got ; that professional success, much as it is to
be desired, is not the be-aU and the end-aU of our
existence ; and that if to gain it is incompatible with
the proper cultivation and development of the nobler
faculties of our nature, it will be purchased at a fearfiil
cost. It may be urged fiirther that aU the higher
forms of intellectual culture, apart from their intrinsic
value, are of great use as mental gymnastics, and
create habits of mind which enable their possessor to
grapple successfully with the more complicated prob-
lems of actual Hfe. But I have never found that con-
siderations of this description have much effect upon
the persons to whom they are addressed. The neces-
sity for worldly success is far too vividly present to
their minds to allow of any other object being weighed
in the scale against it ; and finding the mental power
they have acquired by a practical training sufficient
for all ordinary purposes, they set very little store
upon studies that would increase it.

If the Universities are to obtain any real hold upon
the middle classes, and to raise the low state of mental
culture that now prevails among them, they must carry
the argument a step further than this, and estabhsh
the direct practical utility of some, at least, of the
subjects of study which they offer to those engaged in
manufacturing and professional pursuits. The object
of most of these pursuits is to bring into the service of
man the various material substances by which he is

86 ESSAY II.

surrounded, arid to render them subservient to the
civihzation of the human race ; and, in its fulfilment, a
knowledge of the nature and properties of those sub-
stances, and of the laws which govern them, is an
indispensable condition of success.

Both of the old Universities aim at imparting
knowledge of this description : in one of them, the
study of natural philosophy, the investigation of the
laws that regulate the material universe, is that with
which its most famous traditions are connected. It
is of Cambridge alone that I have any right to speak.
I propose to consider whether the study of natural
philosophy, as now pursued in that University, is made
as available as it might be for the practical purposes of
life, and if not, in what way the method of teaching it
may be improved. It is far from my intention to set
up utihty as the test of worth, for "the contemplation
of truth is a thing worthier and loftier than all utility
and magnitude of works."* If, however, we can increase
the usefulness of a study without diminishing its scien-
tific value or its excellence as a means of mental
training, there wiU be something gained ; and if we do
nothing else, we shall at least make it more attractive
to the majority of mankind. StiU less is it my wish to
say one word in disparagement of mathematics, as the
right foundation of physical science, "the great instru-
ment," as Sir John Herschel terms them, "of all exact
inquiry," without a knowledge of which no one is en-

• Nov. Org., Bk. I., Aph. cxxiy.

THE UNIVEBSITIES. 87

titled to form an independent opinion on any subject
of discussion within their range/' *

The science of mathematics, as most persons know,
is divided into two branches — pure mathematics,
which deal with the Amdamental inttiitions of time
and space ; and mixed or applied mathematics, in which
the first branch of the science is made use of for the
explanation of the natural phenomena learnt by experi-
ment upon such material objects as lie within our
reach, and by observation of those that are beyond it.
In the region of appUed mathematics, celestial and
terrestrial mechanics occupy the foremost place, and
are characterised by a scientific method, not only
highly important in itself, but as a model for the study
of most other branches of natural philosophy. The
method in question finds its most perfect development
in celestial mechanics, and it is as exempHfied in that
department of science that I am about to explain it.

The path which each member of the solar system
describes about its primary is determined not only by
the attraction of the primary but by that of all the
other members of the system of which it forms a
part. If we consider only three attracting bodies, the
problem in its full generality is so complex that all
the resources of mathematical analysis are powerless
to solve it. To obtain a solution we have recourse to
the expedient of ignoring all the forces which act upon
the body except the most powerful one, and calculating

* OutUnes of Astronomy, Intn.

88 ESSAY II.

what its path would be if influenced only by that.
By means of observations conducted with instruments
upon the construction of which the most subtle re-
sources of mechanical and optical art have been ex-
pended, we ascertain how far the result of our first*
calculation diverges from actual fact, and treat this
divergence as a residuum to be accounted for by the
other causes involved. We next inquire to what extent
the phenomenon due to the first cause we have con-
sidered would be afiected by each of the others. If
the disturbiDg forces are small compared with the
principal one, we can obtain an approximate solution
which can be carried to any degree of accuracy required ;
and we so proceed, step by step, diminishing the im-
explained residuum at each operation; the solution of
the problem not beiug deemed complete until theory
and fact exactly tally with each other.

To the complexity arising from the planetary per-
turbations in celestial mechanics the difficulty due to
the molecular properties of matter ofiers a striking
analogy in terrestrial. In order to obtain a first
approximation to the relation between theory and fact
in this branch of mechanical science, we are obliged
to make one or the other of two startling assumptions
respectiDg those properties, and to reason as if aU
matter were either perfectly rigid or perfectly fluid.
As all matter with which we are acquainted is neither
the one nor the other, but deviates more or less widely
from the two extremes, the results of theory cannot
fail to exhibit a correspondiug deviation fron those of

THE UNIVERSITIES. 89

experience. To determine the amount of deviation
in any particular case is the province of experiment,
to account for it is the province of the mathematical
principles of molecular physics. It is at this point,
as it seems to me, that the University fails to satisfy
the legitimate requirements of the time. I never heard
of any experiments on the molecular constitution of
bodies being carried on within its walls, or of a
knowledge of the results of such experiments being
expected from a candidate for mathematical honours.
The science of mechanics is made to consist of a number
of curious intellectual puzzles explanatory of the
phenomena of a wholly imaginary world, rather than
of that which we see and feel and handle. The defect
is the more remarkable from the opposite course
pursued with astronomy, which, notwithstanding its
magnificent interest as a speculative science, is of httle
practical utihty except in the art of navigation. With
the problems of terrestrial mechanics, on the other
hand, every man must have more or less to do every
day of his life. For one who wants to determine the
right ascension of a star, there are scores who have
to build or alter houses, or put up machinery, or
engage in operations demanding a knowledge of the
laws of flowing water. One man thinks that his
architect has put an unnecessary quantity of timber
into his stable roof, another wants to know the probable
effect of cutting away a pillar in a mine, a third to
be told how much water per diem is running over a
weir ; and one hears it said, send for young So-and-So,

90 ESSAY II.

he has been at Cambridge, he knows all about that
sort of thing. Young So-and-So, greatly flattered,
arrives upon the scene with his mathematics, and soon
feels very like a fish out of water, and extremely fooUsh
in the presence of his practical friends.

But, say the advocates of the present state of
things, the function of a University is to teach general,
not particular knowledge. We do not pretend to
educate for professions; if a man wants to learn a
business, he must be bound apprentice to it ; if people
require the sort of information you have been describing,
they must go to experts for it. This objection, as it
seems to me, does not come with a very good grace
from those who exact, without scruple, a knowledge of
the use of astronomical instruments well fitted to
quaUfy its possessors for the post of assistant in
Greenwich Observatory, and for little else. And it may
be rejoined, we are not asking you to give professional
education; we want you to oflfer a scientific culture
wide enough to enable every one to assimilate some-
thing which he will find of use, let him be subsequently
placed in whatever circumstances he may. Experts, as
a class, rely on the rule of thumb, rather than on that
of right reason, and I have known many of them
capable of giving very little assistance in a difficult case.
It is precisely that we may have better educated experts
that we ask you to provide for them a scientific traroing
which they can turn to account.

No time can be more opportune than the present
for improving the Cambridge method of teaching

THE UNIVEESITIES. 91

natural philosophy. Within the last five-arid-twenty
years pure mathematics have received, in some of
their higher departments, extensions so enormous as
to make it hopeless for any student, in the three
short years of his University Hfe, to cover the whole
of both divisions of the science — ^pure and applied.
The necessity for offering him alternative subjects of
study is beginning to be admitted by all. Let ter-
restrial physics, not omitting the theory and application
of structures and machmes, occupy a pronunent place,
as one of those subjects, and let the conclusions of
theory be brought to the bar of experiment before
the eyes of the student. The method of instruction
wiU thus be rendered at once practically usefiil and
philosophically complete.

The importance of ocular demonstration cannot
be too strongly insisted on. No part of our present
system is so essentially vicious as the practice of
encouraging pupils to get up their knowledge of ma-
chines and instruments merely from diagrams, their
knowledge of experiments merely from descriptions
in books. What is learned in this way is not retained
many weeks in the memory, and carries with it but
Uttle advantage into after life. And yet there are
many men who pass through the University every
year and are taught aU about pulleys, and sextants,
and theodolites, and hydrometers, and hydraulic rams,
and scores of things of a similar kind, without the
opportunity of handling one of them, or of seeing it
at work.

92 ESSAT II.

I claiin, then, at the hands of my University on
behalf of the practical world, a larger recognitioa of
the value of experiment as the proper and necessary
complement of apphed mathematics. But it must
not stop here. The practical world requires for the
purposes of life great manipulative skill and know-
ledge of the properties of things; the Universities
must promote the cultivation of experimental science
both for its own sake and as a highly important
instrument of intellectual training. "The great and
indeed the only ultimate source of our knowledge of
natxire and its laws,** says Sir John Herschel, in his
admirable Discourse on the Study of Natural Philo-
sophy, " is ExperiefTbce. Experience may be acquired in
two ways : either, first, by noticing facts as they occur,
without any attempt to influence the frequency of their
occurrence, or to vary the circumstances under which
they occur; this is Observation: or, secondly, by
putting ia action causes and agents over which we have
control, and purposely varying their combinations, and
noticing what effects take place; this is E^erimmty
How potent a means of discovery experiment is, is
forcibly pointed out by the same writer. How, when
we employ observation, "we sit still and listen to a
tale told us perhaps obscurely, piecemeal, and at long in-
tervals of time, with our attention more or less awake."
How "by experiment we cross-examine our witness, and
by comparing one part of his evidence with the other,
while he is yet before us, and reasoning upon it in his
presence, we are enabled to put pointed and searching

THE UNIVERSITIES. 93

questions, the answer to which may at once enable us
to make up our minds." How, " in those departments
of physics the phenomena of which axe beyond our
control, or into which experimental inquiry from other
causes has not been carried, the progress of knowledge
has been slow, uncertain, and irregular, while in such
as admit of experiment, and in which mankind have
agreed to its adoption, it has been rapid, sure, and
steady.'' Powerful as experiment is as an instrument
of discovexy, the habits oTmind which it engenders are
scarcely less deserving of attention. Diligence in
searching after facts, patience in collecting them, even
to the minutest detail, scrupulous accuracy in recording
them, skill in framing the questions with which we
interrogate nature, judgment in selecting the answers
pertinent to our inquiry, promptitude in recognising
the true significance of the answers we select, all these
mental qualities are demanded from the student of
experimental science. They are no less necessary to
the successful man of business, and the student who
has acquired them is already well furnished for the
struggle of life.

There can be no adequate reason why Cambridge
should not possess the first school of experimental
science in Europe — to what can it be owing that this
great branch of research should be aU but banished
to London and Manchester? I fear the answer is
that the men of theory, excepting the few whose
sympathies are wider and more generous than the
rest, look down with contempt upon the men of

94 ESSAY II.

experiment, and are responsible to some extent for
producing in those they train a tone of mind which
impairs their useftdness in after life. The men of
experiment are amply revenged. All the great scien-
tific discoveries of the last twenty years have been
made in the domain of physical science, and no. one
jealous for the honour of the ancient Universities can
reflect without pain upon the small part which they
have played in them. And if the men of theory
despise the experimentahsts, the latter, on their side,
are at no pains to conceal the contempt they entertain
for the theorists. And so the two great weapons of
discovery— Theory and Experiment— instead of being
wielded by the same hand, are becoming every day
more widely separated from each other, and the
progress of knowledge is greatly retarded thereby.
If a training in experiment be necessary to the theorist,
a sound theoretical culture is no less necessary to the
experimentalist; and how few there are who possess
it ! Is it too much to hope that the two capacities
may sometimes be developed together ? To such a
union we shall one day owe a rational theory of electri-
city. Had Faraday only been as great a mathematician
as he was an accomphshed experimentaKst, he would
have been the Newton as well as the Kepler of his
science.

"Those who have handled science," says Bacon,
"have been either men of experiment or men of
dogmas. The men of experiment, are like the ant, they
only coUect and use; the reasoners resemble spiders

THE UNIVERSITIES. 95

who make cobwebs out of their own substance. But
the bee takes a middle course; it gathers its material
from the flowers of the garden and the field, but trans-
forms and digests it by a power of its own. Not unlike
this is the true business of philosophy, for it neither
rehes solely or chiefly on the powers of the mind, nor
does it take the matter which it gathers from natural
history and mechanical experiments, and lay it up in
the memory whole as it finds it, but it lays it up in the
understanding altered and digested. Therefore from a
closer and purer league between these two faculties
(such as has never yet been made) much may be
hoped." * It is strange that in the very place where
the illustrious founder of inductive philosophy received
his academic training we lay this aphorism so little
to heart.

Another reason for according to experimental
science that position in the studies of the University
which ought rightly to belong to it must not be left out
of sight. The necessity for scientific instruction in our
public schools is admitted on all hands, and is being
urged in language which it is impossible to resist.
The pupils are wilhng and eager to learn, but the
teachers are not forthcoming. Special subjects are
always best taught by men of wide general culture,
and academically trained professors of experimental
science would be preferred to others, if only it were
possible to get them. School managers call upon the

* Nov. Org., Bk. I., Aph. xov.

96 ESSAY II.

Universities to send them teachers who possess not
only competent scientific knowledge, but the manipula-
tive dexterity necessary to impart it. They offer a
handsome salary for the office they wish to be filled,
but the only applications they receive are fi*om men
who express their willingness, in case of election, to
acquire a knowledge of the subjects they are called
upon to teach. If, on the other hand, a mathematical
mastership be vacant, it is impossible to see without
astonishment the number and distinction of the can-
didates whom the smallest salary is certain to attract,
and to avoid thinking how much better it would be for
the nation if a larger part of the intellectual energy
which tlje Universities produce were devoted to the
cultivation of practical science.

The criticisms I have ventured to make on the
Cambridge method of study are derived from a Uni-
versity experience acquired nearly twenty years ago.
I am not unaware what great exertions have since been
made to remedy the defects to which I have alluded,
and what beneficial results those exertions have pro-
duced. The fact that in 1869 the two highest of the
successful competitors for the Whitworth scholarships
were Cambridge men, is a gratifying proof that the
University has made no little progress in the right
direction; my object in writing is to give to the move-
ment every impulse that I can. What is wanted is
not only to create new means of study, but to
stimulate into increased activity those at present
existing. The professorship of Natural Philosophy,

THE UNIVERSITIES. 97

SO long associated with the distinguished name of
Professor Willis, should be brought into harmonious
working with the Mathematical Tripos, and the pro-
fessorial teaching made to tell in the examination.
The Natural Science Tripos established in 1851 was
an earnest effort on the part of the University to
promote the study of the sciences of experiment and
observation, and although it has produced some good
effect, it has met with far less success than might fairly
have been expected from it. As long as it was not
permitted to confer a passport to a degree, and was
practically ignored by the colleges, its failure was not
surprising. Since the removal of the former restriction
in 1861, it has exhibited new vitality, and when the
colleges are sufficiently liberal to recognize excellence
in the natural sciences as no less deserving of reward
than excellence in the older academical studies, these
sciences will take that place in the University to
which they are justly entitled. Above all things, the
great branch of modern research known as Experi-
mental Physics should be intrusted to a special pro-
fessor. Honoured sons of the University who have
won brilliant distinctions in other fields of labour are
ready and anxious to fill the post. It cannot be said
that the University has no fiinds for such a purpose.
The wealth of the colleges is the measure of its power
in this respect, and the res angusta domi is the last
plea that can be entertained. And as one passes among
the colleges, and beholds with amazement the costly
material structures that have recently been added to

H

98 ESSAY II.

them, it is impossible to repress the wish that the great
temple of learning which is there erected may receive
an addition no less magnificent, and that it may be
the glory of the University, in experimental science, as
in all other departments of human inquiry, "to lay
more firmly the foundations and extend more widely
the limits of the power and greatness of man." *

WM. MATHEWS, Jun.

• Nov. Org., Bk. I., Aph. cxvi.

ESSAY III.

SOME THOUGHTS ON PAUPERISM

TJ'ORTT years ago pauperism in England had grown
-*- to a height which seriously threatened the sta-
bihty of the countiy. In the towns very many of the
inhabitants were sJppori^d by the rates, while over a
large proportion of the rural districts, the labourers
and their families had mostly become paupers, being
maintained by the parish, which hired them out to the
farmers. In some parishes, indeed, land went entirely
out of cultivation ; for no one could afford to occupy
it while paying the enormous poor's-rates levied ; and
in other districts a similar state of things appeared
imminent.

Under such circumstances the Amendment Act of
1834 was passed, which, whatever may be thought
of some of its provisions, effected a great diminution
in the burden of pauperism.

Since 1834 great social improvements have been

100 ESSAY III.

made. Our system of railways has been created, penny
postage and electric telegraphs introduced, machinery
greatly improved and extended, free trade established,
and vast reduction effected in the departments of
taxation pressing upon manufactures and commerce,
which have increased in an enormous ratio. Education
also, though far from being either so generally spread
or so good in quality as the public needs require, has
made great progress ; and, though there is still much
room for improvement, important portions of the
working classes have sensibly advanced in temperance
and providence. Wages, notwithstanding some fluc-
tuations, have risen in most employments throughout
the country; and the institution of the Money Order
system, the wide extension of Savings Banks under the
auspices of the Post Office, and the establishment of
Building Societies and Cooperative Associations have
afforded great facilities for turning the improved earn-
ings to account.

From all these considerations it might have been
expected that pauperism, relatively to population, would
have progressively lessened ; yet, since the great dimi-
nution which followed the change of system occasioned
by the Act of 1834, this has been by no means the
case ; and of late years, unhappily, there has been in
the metropolitan district a growing increase,* while
in the country generally no decrease has taken place.

* It appears by the last Annnal Beport of the Poor Law Board that in
1834 the expenditure on the maintenance of the poor alone (excluding the
establishment charges) of England and Wales was £6,317,235, which, npon a

PAUPERISM. 101

This non-diminution of pauperism, in spite of so
many enlightened measures of public improvement, is
one of the most unfavourable signs of our time, and it
behoves us to inquire carefully into its causes.

From the fact of the non-decrease of pauperism
it must be inferred that there are causes at work
which counteract the effect of the potent means of
improvement enumerated. Some of these causes are
undoubtedly unconnected with the administration of
the Poor Laws. Drunkenness, ignorance, improvidence,
and vice are great sources of pauperism ; but they are
not more — probably less — powerful than in former
times. One evil, however, seems to have recently much
grown, namely, the interference with industrial work
by trades unions, frequently causing strikes which im-
poverish large bodies of men, women, and children ; and
even when strikes do not result, the vexatious regula-
tions enforced on workmen by unions and the exces-
sive wages screwed out of masters who have sunk
their capital in undertakings or have placed themselves
under contracts, have ruined many employers and
driven trades out of the country. To this cause may

population of 14,372,000, amonnted to 8s. 9id. per head on the whole popnla-
tion, while in 1868 £7,498,061 was spent on this object, showing upon a total
population of 21,540,000, a bnrden of 6s. ll^d. per head. In 1835 the burden
was 7s. 7d. per head, being the heaviest since 1834. Daring the period
which elapsed between 1835 and 1868 the bnrden per head of the population
fluctuated between a maximum of 7s. Ifd. (in 1848) and a minimum of 5s. 5d.
(in 1837). In the quinquennial periods from 1836 to 1865 the average annual
burden per head on the whole population has been respectively 1836-40, 5s. 9id. ;
1841-5, 6s. Ifd.; 1846-50, 6s. 4id.; 1851-5, 5s. 7f d. ; 1856-60, 58. lUd.;
1860-65, 6s. Ofd. ; and in the three years 1866-8, 6s. 6id. For four years past
the proportionate expenditure has been increasing.

102 ESSAY III.

be in great measure attributed the destitution with
which the eastern districts of the metropoUs have
been recently afflicted.

Another cause of pauperism, which has probably-
produced a considerable effect, is the increase of the
crimraal class during the last twenty or thirty years,
due partly to the abolition of transportation without the
estabUshment of an efficient substitute, and partly to
the practice which has gcown up of sentencing serious
offenders to short terms of imprisonment, on the ex-
piration of which they are turned loose to recommence
their depredations on the pubUc and train others to
their nefarious calling. Thus, many families are cor-
rupted and ruined, and their weaker members thrown
on the poor's-rate for support.

Making, however, full allowance for the effects of
the foregoing causes of pauperism, there remains a
large proportion of the evil to be attributed to defects
in our Poor Law system.

Our pauper population (whether reheved in the
workhouse or out of doors) may be divided into three
classes.

1st. — The infirm, whether from age or sickness.

2nd. — Children.

3rd. — Able-bodied adults.

The mode of deahng with the first class has much
less bearing upon the increase or diminution of pau-
perism than the treatment of the other classes. Still,
a bad infirmary — such as was recently proved to exist
in many London workhouses, which, instead of curing

PAUPERISM. 103

its inmates rapidly, and thus enabling them to set to
work again, keeps them long sick, and perhaps converts
them into permanent invalids — must tend to increase
the burden on the parish. On the other hand, lavish
allowances to the sick and aged encourage malingering
and diminish the disposition to lay by for a rainy
day.

The training of children has a most important
bearing upon the future burden of pauperism; and
herein is our system specially faulty. The children
relieved within doors will form two divisions: 1st —
Those belonging to the adult paupers, who remain in
the workhouse schools only while their parents con-
tinue in the adult wards; and, 2nd — Those permanently
burdened on the parish — as orphans, deserted children,
and the offspring of permanent sick, of lunatics, of idiots,
and of criminals sentenced to long terms of punishment.
With regard to the former — although, of course, their
periods of residence should be utilized by imparting
such instruction as is possible — but little can be
effected, owing to the shortness of their stay and the
irregular hves which they generally lead when outside.
But the training given to the children of the parish
(as they may be called, since that body stands towards
them in loco parentis) is of vast importance to their
future welfare, and consequently, to the extent to
which they will hereafter become burdens on the
community. There are three modes of disposing of
these children. The most usual is to rear them in
schools within workhouse walls; Secondly: several

104 ESSAY III.

of the more populous town parishes have established
separate schools in the country at a distance from the
workhouses ; and, in a few cases, groups of parishes
have united (under the provisions of an Act of Parlia-
ment) to form District Schools. Thirdly : a practice
has been adopted within the last five or six years of
placing the children out to board with respectable
cottagers.

In the Workhouse and District Schools the children
are taught reading, writing, and arithmetic, and receive
religious instruction. They also usually have some
industrial employment, and the girls sew and help in
house- work; and, when old enough, situations are
found for them. The intellectual instruction is generally
good, and there is an appearance of order and neatness
in the schools which produces a favourable impression
upon a visitor. This appearance, however, unhappily
is fallacious. Thus the schools of the Eton Union had
for years been considered as models for imitation, and
had been so designated in the Inspector's reports ; yet,
circumstances having occasioned a searching examina-
tion, so much evil was found to be lurking under the
fair exterior that the Board of Guardians at once broke
up the estabhshment, removing all the children to a
District School. And long experience shows that chil-
dren brought up in workhouse schools are not really
well prepared for their after-life ; for it is well known
to those conversant with the subject that a very large
proportion — particularly of the girls — become thieves,
vagrants, or prostitutes, or relapse into pauperism.

PAUPERISM. 105

Indeed, there seems to be a peculiar shiftlessness and
want of energy about those who have been inmates of
workhouse schools, especially girls. The managers of
the London Refuges for fallen women state that by far
their most hopeless subjects belong to this class, and the
secretary of a refuge for destitute girls gives a similar
account of such of them as came imder her care. They
seem to be without " gumption " and self-reliance, are
baulked by small hindrances, and then often take
refuge in the workhouse.

This unhappy result has been attributed to a pauper
atmosphere^ as it were, which pervades a workhouse,
and to the children having been brought up to consider
that place as their home, whither they feel inclined to
return on the loss of a situation or the occurrence
of any diflSculty. And probably this notion is not
without foimdation. As the district and separate
schools are at a distance from the union-house it was
hoped that the children would escape the workhouse
taint, and, consequently, great expectations have been
entertained that these establishments would be more
successful in training the children to be useful members
of society. Their results, however, have been far
from realizing the hopes of their founders, while the
expense of maintaining children at them has dis-
couraged their further extension. Two main evils
of the schools within workhouses apply with equal
force to the District Schools. 1st : the contamination
arising from the frequent passing through the school
of the casual children, who merely stay so long as

106 ESSAY III.

their parents are in the workhouse, and in their
intervals of freedom usuaUy hve in vagrancy, and,
perhaps, in crime; aoxd, secondly, what I stii more
important, the absence of the family tie and of that
insensible training to the business of life afforded by
the humblest honest home, but wanting in the most
carefully conducted school.

The third mode of dealing with pauper children —
the boarding them out with cottagers — ^has but recently
been introduced into England, though in Scotland
it has been in general use for thirty years past.
Formerly, in that country, children were kept in large
schools as here; but the evil effects of the system
becoming well known, it was abandoned, and board-
ing-out substituted. The results are most satis-
factory; for the children are nearly all absorbed
into the honest working population, and cause
no further trouble of any kind to the authorities.
This success is undoubtedly owing to the discretion
and care wherewith the system has been conducted,
without which, indeed, it might degenerate into some-
thing like the old farming-out system in vogue in
England before the reform of 1834, the remembrance
of which has caused a prejudice against boarding-out
not easily to be overcome. In Scotland the super-
vision is placed in the hands of officers of high
class who devote much time to it. Firstly, great
care is taken in the selection of homes, none but
the cottages of persons of good character being chosen,
situated in healthy neighbourhoods, and within reach

PAUPERISM. 107

of parish schools, which the children always have to
attend. The superintending ofl&cer visits the homes
at unexpected times, and when he is dissatisfied, makes
complaint, and, if necessary, removes the child. Ground
of complaint, however, rarely arises ; there being gener-
ally only one or two children boarded in one cottage —
never more than four,— and the remuneration being
merely enough to compensate the cotter for the actual
cost out of pocket to which he is subjected by their
presence, the idea of taking the children for profit —
the making a trade of it, the bane of the old farming-
out system — does not arise. The cottagers receive
the inmates out of love of children, and thus a
parental feeling arises,^ so that when the child has
grown old enough to gain his Uvehhood, and the parish
allowance consequently ceases, it usually appears that
employment has been obtained for him, and he con-
tinues to abide with his foster-parents like their own
offspring. The attendance at school, in addition to its
direct advantage, has this incidental benefit — that it
insures the detection of ill-treatment of the child in his
home ; for the schoolfellows would become acquainted
with the fact, whence it could scarcely fail to reach
their parents and the schoolmaster, and thence the
minister of the parish, who would feel it his duty to
make a representation to the superintending ofl&cer. In
Ireland, a large institution for the support of orphans
has for many years past boarded its children out with
cottagers, and with a success similar to what has been
attained in Scotland. And in several continental coun-

108 ESSAY III.

tries a similar practice lias been followed with the like
happy results.

This mode of disposing of the children permanently
burdened on the parish seems to contain much promise;
and if conducted as in Scotland — ^viz., with a careful
selection of homes and a vigilant supervision — may be
expected to be crowned with similar success, and thus,
for the fdture, one copious source of pauperism may be
dried up.

We have now to consider a class of children, the
treatment of whom has a more important bearing upon
the mass of pauperism and crime in the kingdom than
that of aU the other descriptions put together. The
in-door pauper children under sixteen years of age
amounted, on the 1st July, 1868, to 51,939, of whom
it is estimated that from 16,000 to 17,000 would be suit-
able for boarding-out, while to the remainder, owing
to their short sojourn in the workhouse, it is abnost
impossible to impart any useful training. But the
children relieved out of doors reached on that day the
huge figure of 296,734. A large portion of this latter
class are illegitimate, their mothers receiving from the
parish a weekly allowance for their maintenance ; the
remainder are the children of widows, of infirm persons
themselves having out-door rehef, and of others who
are supposed not to be able to support them. The
education and training of so vast a body — about a
fourteenth part of the whole child population of England
and Wales — must tell most effectively upon the numbers
of the pauper, criminal, and vagrant classes of the im-

PAUPEEISM. 109

mediate future, and, indeed, of the present time, for a
great part of these children are abeady quite old enough
to figure as thieves and vagrants, while in a few years
they will have become youths and men and women.

Unhappily there is no doubt but that many of
these out-door pauper children are not being trained
up in the way they should go. Teachers in ragged
schools frequently discover that the mothers of children
admitted in a most destitute and neglected state are
still receiving parish aid for them, which is often
spent in the gin-shop ; and there is much reason to
believe that many of the neglected and mendicant
class of children are thus being supported at the cost
of the community. In 1855 an Act of ParUament
(18 & 19 Vict., c. 34, commonly called Evelyn Denison's
Act) was passed to authorize boards of guardians to
pay for the instruction of out-door pauper children;
but a clause was unfortunately inserted forbidding
education to be made a condition of relief. It might
be fancied that this was proposed by some of those
extreme supporters of " the right divine [of parents]
to govern ill," who would rather allow a child to become
a beggar or thief than run the shghtest risk of his
being trained in a rehgion different from that supposed
to have been held by his progenitors ; but in fact this
provision was inserted at the instance of the Poor-Law
Board, on the plea that their duty was to reUeve
destitution, and not to forward education. They had
evidently been reading Swift's Directions to Servants :
" Never submit to stir a finger in any business but that

110 ESSAY III.

for which you were particularly hired. For example,
if the groom be drunk or absent, and the butler be
ordered to shut the stable door, the answer is ready,
* An please your honour, I don't understand horses.' "
Surely, whatever yiew may be taken of the now
much-mooted question of compulsory education of
children in general, the community has a right to
see that those maintained at its expense do not
grow up to be a burden upon it ! Not only ought
the restriction in Evelyn Denison's Act to be at once
repealed, but Boards of Guardians should be directed
to take care that aU children supported by the rates
are properly educated. It is gratifying, however, to
learn that the great majority of this class of children
is either at school or at work ; for by two very recent
returns (Sess. 1870, Nos. 33 and 123) it appears
that, of 233,036 out-door pauper children between the
ages of three and fifteen, 144,633 attend day schools
(chiefly at the cost of parents, friends, or patrons,
though the proportion paid for by the Guardians is
increasing), and 33,982 are at work — all save 54,421,
or less than 23^ per cent. StiU this is a very consid-
erable number; and it should be remarked that 33,203
of these children, neither at school nor at work, are
six years old and upwards. Some of those at work,
moreover, are of very tender age ; thus we find 4 at
three years old, 8 at four, 6 at five, 29 at six, 96 at
seven, 473 at eight, 1,323 at nine, 2,738 at ten, 4,808
at eleven, and 7,297 at twelve years of age. Since 1859
the per-centage of these children at school has risen

PAUPERISM. Ill

jfrom 56'5 to 62*7, while the proportion of those neither
at work nor at school has diminished from 25*4 to
23 '3 per cent, on the whole number. In some towns
in Scotland an excellent plan has been adopted. In-
stead of making a money allowance to a woman for the
maintenance of a child, the parish places it at one of
the admirable industrial feeding schools which have
been estabhshed in most towns of that coimtry in
imitation of those founded about thirty years since, at
Aberdeen, by Mr. Sheriff Watson. Here the child
receives aU its meals the seven days of the week, but
returns to its mother's dwelling to sleep. It is well
taught, and trained to industry, and, when old enough,
is placed in a situation, while for some years further
it remains under the kindly supervision of the ladies
and gentlemen who interest themselves in the school.
These children, it is found, nearly aU turn out indus-
trious and respectable.

The last class to be considered are the able-bodied
poor, with regard to whom, the mode in which they
are dealt with in the administration of relief must
exert much influence on the increase or diminution of
pauperism.

These are divisible into in-door, casual, and out-
door paupers.

As a general rule there are but few able-bodied
men permanently in the workhouse; though many
tramps take up their abode in it for the night ; and if
the vagrant laws were enforced as they should be, that
pernicious class of persons would be driven, either to

112 ESSAY III.

resort to honest labour, or to become regular inmates
of the poorhouses, instead of preying upon the public
and setting an example of idleness and mendicancy.
The in-door poor, however, comprise a considerable
nmnber of able-bodied women, among whom are many
persons of loose life who come into the workhouse
for their lying-in. Attempts are sometimes made at
classification, with more or less success ; but very fre-
quently those persons are placed in the same wards
with girls and young women as yet unpolluted, but
who, in such company, are not likely long to remain
so ; and thus the dissolute class is constantly recruited.
In the Dublin workhouses some years ago a most
melancholy spectacle met the eye. Many hundreds of
strong young women resided there in an apparently
hopeless state of degradation, violent and brutal in their
manners, and turbulent and riotous to the extent of
assaulting the oiSficers, and sometimes even the matron
and master. An interesting experiment, however, was
tried about twelve years ago, by sending a number
of them to a convent of Sisters of Mercy, to whom
were allowed the rations and materials of clothing
which these women would have consumed in the work-
house. So efl&cacious was the gentle but firm discipline
applied by the worthy nuns, that the women soon
began to improve, and after some months several of
them were rendered fit for service ; and places being
found, the major part have become respectable mem-
bers of society. Had the guardians given the plan a
fair trial it is possible that by this means the Dublin

PAUPERISM. 113

poorhouses would have been to a great extent cleared
of able-bodied women ; but unhappily they insisted on
sending the most unruly — women who needed the
severer discipline of a reformatory, such as has proved
so success J in preparing the irish female convicts
for freedom. And thus the Sisters were compelled, to
discontinue receiving paupers. More recently, how-
ever, some benevolent ladies in Dublin have, with the
permission of the authorities, formed classes for able-*
bodied women in the workhouse, which are rendered
agreeable by the addition of sacred music to needle-
work, and other pursuits. When sufficiently improved,
employment is found for these women out of the work-
house, where, however, many of them continue to
sleep until their earnings enable them to take lodgings
and become independent. There is every reason to
beheve that the great majority continue respectable
and self-supporting. In a large London parish a
considerable number of young women have been in-
trusted by the guardians to a society of ladies, who,
after some training in a home, have obtained situations
for them as domestic servants. One lady has taken
out forty fallen girls with infants ; she takes care of
the babes and places the mothers in service, they pay-
ing her for the maintenance. The guardians make
her a small allowance during a short period after each
mother and child have left the workhouse. There is
no reason why arrangements such as these might not
be greatly extended. If an allowance equal to their
cost in the house were made, it would not be diffi-

I

114 ESSAT III.

cult to find benevolent ladies, qualified for the task, who
would undertake the charge of training these young
persons, so as to qualify them for respectable employ-
ment. At any rate, the work done by these women
in the poorhouse ought as far as possible to be of
a usefiil and improving character, while such employ-
ment as picking oakum should be reserved for those
undergoing punishment for serious breaches of dis-
cipline.

A radical defect in the management of our work-
houses (and which applies in great measure also to our
gaols, though there some steps towards amendment
have been recently taken) is that no provision is
afforded to enable the inmates to rise out of their
position as paupers. So long as they remain in the
building they are employed, fed, and clothed ; but as
they derive no special benefit from their labour, they
naturally work as little and as ineffectively as may be
without subjecting themselves to punishment, and con-
sequently when they leave, are as little inclined or
as incompetent to gain an honest livelihood as when
they entered. Far different is the treatment of paupers
in some continental countries. In France there are
houses of industry, to which vagrants and other per-
sons unable or unwiUing to maintain themselves are
committed by the Prefect. Here each person is taught
some trade or occupation by which a UveUhood can be
gained, and is employed at it for the benefit of the
estabhshment, a small portion, however, of the earnings
being placed to his account ; and he is not permitted

PAUPERISM. 115

to leave the institution until he has both learned the
trade and accumulated a suflBcient sum to start with.
Thus, not only does he acquire a handicraft, but is
trained to industry and forethought, and to the habit
of working steadily and energetically for a fature object.
When liberated, therefore, he is more likely to do well
than one who has merely toiled under compulsion.
The French plan of dealing with vagrants is sub-
stantially the same as the mark-system whose wonderful
effects in the Irish convict prisons, and wherever it has
been fairly tried, have attracted so much pubhc
attention. In Holland and other countries efforts have
been successfully made to convert vagrants, beggars,
and idlers into industrious citizens — ratepayers instead
of rate-consumers.

The class of casuals, tramps, or vagrants, as com-
pared with other descriptions of paupers, is not
numerous, numbering altogether, on July 1st, 1868,
7,946, of whom 6,053 were relieved in-doors. But this
class contains many very pernicious persons — idle, and
often ready to commit depredations when opportunity
offers — though a proportion of those returned under
this head are men reaUy travelling in search of work.
It is important that these two descriptions should be
distinguished and treated differently. In some counties
a system of passes has been adopted. Upon the pass is
written the name of each workhouse and the date of
sojourn; thus it is learned whether the traveller
is really pushing on through the country or merely
wandering about; and in the former case he is

116 ESSAY III.

not subjected to the labour-test. In some work-
bouses bathing is enforced upon those who ask for a
night's lodging; and experience shows this to be a
potent test, for the regular vagrant will go miles round
in order to avoid a workhouse where he wiU be com-
pelled to bathe. Every practicable means should be
taken to discourage the body of mendicants and
vagrants.

The last class we have to deal with is that of the
able-bodied adult out-door paupers, who, like the out-
door children, enormously exceed those abiding in the
workhouse ; the latter on July 1st, 1868, amoimted to
36,461, while the able-bodied out-door paupers num-
bered 379,976, or about one-fortieth part of the whole
adult population of the country, thus forming a great
field in which good or bad principles of administra-
tion may act.

Whether out-door relief ought ever to have been
introduced, even as respects the infirm and sick, is a
question upon which great doubt has been entertained.
In Ireland it does not exist ; and notwithstanding the
poverty of that country, and the lack of manufactures
to employ the surplus population, the burden of
pauperism there is much Hghter than in England.
The whole annual cost of the poor-law system in Ireland
was according to the latest returns £600,000 on a
population of five millions and a half, or about 2s. 2d.
per head of the inhabitants, while in England and
Wales the cost was £11,000,000 on a population of
twenty-one millions, or 10s. 3d. per head of the in-

PAUPEEISM. 117

habitants. As has been well remarked, no person gets
on to the in-door roll sooner than he can avoid, while
on the other hand few get off the out-door roll before
they can help it. A system of allowance for livelihood
in old age to those who have not saved in their youth,
or whose children do not maintain them, must tend
greatly to discourage prudence, forethought, and filial
duty ; still more so must aid to the able-bodied. And
this no doubt is one of the causes of the notorious
weakness of those virtues in the poorer population
of England as compared with that of other highly-
civiKsed countries. Still the practice has existed so
long and been so widely spread, and has entered so
completely into the system of life in this country, that
to aboUsh it suddenly would create great suffering and
probably even danger to the State. But out-door relief
should be confined within as narrow limits as possible,
and particularly as regards the able-bodied; and
wherever practicable a labour-test should be applied.

AU who have paid much attention to the subject
must have been struck with the Tnahe-shift character of
many of the proceedings of Boards of Guardians, and
with the disposition to keep down the rates of the
current year rather than to adopt means of diminishing
pauperism for the future. The cause of this, however,
is not far to seek. It lies in the principle of rating
which has always obtained in England since the statute
of Elizabeth, viz., the placing the burden (and con-
sequently the power of electing guardians) upon the
occupier, who (when, as is usually the case, he is not

118 ESSAY III.

the owner) has no permanent interest in the parish, and

naturally concerns himself rather with the rates of the

current year than with those of years to come,

when he may have ceased to be a ratepayer. What

is the real incidence of the rates in the long run is a

question much mooted by political economists. That

with some descriptions of property, as agricultural

land, they fall ultimately upon the owner, is pretty

clear; but how far this is the case with respect to

house property, is more doubtful. Clearly, however,

the proprietor has a great and permanent interest

in the matter; it may, therefore, be fairly assumed

that, were he rated and consequently had a voice

in the election of guardians, he would be inclined

to use his influence in favour of measures for the

permanent diminution of pauperism. In Scotland,

although the tenant pays the poor-rate in the first

instance, he can deduct half of it from the rent

payable to his landlord, as is the case indeed with

other rates in that country. Were this law introduced

into England power might be given to the landlord to

demand to be rated immediately, and thus have his

quota of votes in the election of guardians.*

From any point of view, however, it is clear that

pauperism is a subject of very deep import, and that

its causes and remedies demand the ftdlest and most

anxious investigation.

A. HILL.

* Since this was written the President of the Poor Law Board has stated
in Parliament that the imposition of a portion of the poor-rates npon the owner
is in contemplation.

ESSAY IV.

THE NATURAL HISTORY OF LAW.

T" AM fdlly aware that to a cursory reader the title
-^ of this essay will only excite a passing curiosity
as to what can be its meaning, followed by a languid
reflection that as it is something about so dry a subject
as law, it must be dull and uninteresting. My motive
for choosing this topic is, that I have observed that
most intelligent and well informed persons have very
much clearer and more correct notions about the nature
and objects of the various physical sciences, even those
which do not immediately afiect their daily lives, than
they have about the nature and growth of the laws and
moral opinions which touch them in every point of their
daily lives. Persons whose knowledge of any physical
science is confined to the information acquired by popu-
lar lectures or treatises, have notions, correct as far as
they go, of the relations which subsist between the
forces now at work in the world around us, and those

120 ESSAY IV.

wldcli have produced its present condition. When we
turn from physical science to positive law, all those
who have not studied the subject, and the great
majority of those who have, never seem to catch even
a glimpse of its relation to human nature and society.
If the reader doubt this, let him stop and note what
he would say if he were suddenly required to answer
the question, "What is law?" K he did not confine
himself to some definition learnt by rote, but clothed
in words the exact notions or prejudices which would
be spontaneously excited by the question, he would
most likely answer that " law was a collection of forms
and rules made comphcated and cumbrous by lawyers,
and therefore continually needing amendment, in order
to do in a bungling and roundabout manner, and at
great cost, that which could be done better and more
cheaply by common sense {i. e. his sense) without any
such rules or forms." It is very likely, that as soon as
he had given utterance to this conception, he would
feel it to be either inadequate or incorrect ; but how or
why he would not be able to detect. He would, how-
ever, be very clear that, but for some secret hindrances
which he does not understand, but which he beheves
to be owing to the perverse ingenuity of lawyers, law
might be made a very simple affair. He would hold
that a small committee of sensible men could fi^ame a
simple and clear code, not larger than the New Testa-
ment, which he who runs might read and understand,
and fi:*om which aU possible cases might be decided as
surely as a sum in arithmetic can be done by a correct

THE NATURAL HISTORY OP LAW. 121

application of the proper rules. It is not my object
in this essay to vindicate lawyers from the accusation
implied against them in this mistaken conception ; but
rather to show how erroneous the conception is, by
tracing law to its origin in human nature, or, in other
words, its natural history.

Now the fundamental assumption underlying almost
aU erroneous views about law is, that law is or ought
to be a fixed and unalterable rule: that, if properly
framed, it would consist of well-defined principles and
maxims from which, by deduction, all possible cases
could be decided. This assumption is fostered in the
minds of most well-informed Enghshmen by two
causes : their knowledge of science, and the antiquity
of their poHtical institutions. Although we may be
ignorant of the details of any and every particular
science, the conception of law in the sense in which
the term is mis-applied to the unbroken succession of
uniformities which we call laws of nature, is not only
familiar to us all, but is day by day interweaving itself
with all our own conceptions of natural phenomena.
Again, when we think of our Bnghsh constitution we
naturally recur to the Great Charter, more than six cen-
turies old ; to trial by jury, for which a higher antiquity
is claimed ; and these and other similar conunon-places
all help to increase the belief that law is something which,
if only well laid down at first, will last for ever, and
that if our laws require amendment it is because, like
modern houses, they were constructed by persons whose
interest it is to have them continually needing repair.

122 ESSAY IV.

In opposition to this assumption it may be asserted
that the first essential condition of a correct con-
ception of the nature of positive law and its relations
to society, is to realize with the utmost distinctness
the fact that human law, unlike the successions of
phenomena we call laws of nature, is not a fixed
quantity, nor is it constant or imiform in its operation,
but is and must be constantly varying with every
variation — political, social, moral, and intellectual — of
the community in which it is in operation. Before
we proceed to the proof of this proposition, it will be
well, in order to preserve the sequence of thought, to
define the terms "positive law." By this is meant
the course of conduct prescribed or set (positus) by
the government of a community, under the sanction
of punishment in case of disobedience. It is the
command of a course of conduct, as distinguished fi^om
a single act, which gives to positive law its likeness to
the uniformities we call laws of nature. It is the
sanction of punishment which constitutes its ^nlikeness
to these laws of nature ; for, as has been well observed,
we cannot conceive of the planets being punished for
not continuing their accustomed revolutions. It is
the circumstance that these punishments are inflicted
by the government of the community as a government,
which is one of the chief differences between law
proper, and those obUgations to observe a course of con-
duct which arise jfrom the sanctions of public opinion,
or to change the phrase, of public morality (mores),
or of individual morality (or conscience), or religion.

THE NATURAL HISTORY OF LAW. 123

It happens fortunately for the intelligibility of the
subject, that the earliest and most celebrated code of
law that the world has seen is in the hands of every
possessor of an English Bible ; and because the main
propositions of my argument can be verified by the
books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy,
as well as by the statutes at large, I shall, where
it is possible, take my illustrations alternately from
the Mosaic and the English law, which, by manifesting
the real connection between systems of law so very
different, wiU serve to show what are the facts in
himian nature and history on which aU law is based.

The first proposition, then, to be illustrated as
against the theory that law can be both simple and
permanent, is that as soon as any law is laid down
definitely and positively, the next advance of society
may and generally does render it either inadequate
or injurious. To use a homely illustration, the law
of a progressive community, unless it be continually
altered, is like the garment of a growing youth: he
grows, and the garment does not, with the same result
in both cases — first inconvenience and then rupture.
In the one case, nobody blames the tailor, except for
an original misfit ; in the other, the jurist incurs not
only the blame which is justly due to him if there
were any want of precision or fitness in the original
law, but also the unjust blame that his work did not
fit the community at different stages of its moral,
political, or intellectual growth.

Now, the causes which are constantly invalidating

124 ESSAT IV.

the system of law of any community are, first, the
absolute impossibility of propounding rules for all
possible cases. Of this, the Mosaic code famishes
an apposite example. By that code as first promul-
gated, a man's landed estate at his death descended
to all his sons ; the elder son having a portion double
that of his brethren (Deut. xxi, 1 7), and not an entire
preference as with us. The purpose of this legislation,
like that of the feudal system, was to estabhsh a
military force on the basis of tenure, and it omitted
to provide for the case of a failure of male descendants.
Such a case occurred when Zelophehad died, leaving
five daughters, but no son. The daughters claimed
their father's estate on account of special circumstances
of merit in their father, and the hardship to them of
losing their patrimony {NuTnh. xxvii, 1-11), and the
result was the establishment in aU cases of the right
of succession of daughters, on failure of sons. In curing
one evil, however, the legislator had unwittingly caused
another. K a daughter who succeeded to her father's
inheritance in one tribe married a man of another
tribe, her property passed into that other tribe, and
this was inconsistent with all tribal rights and duties.
To meet this new diflBculty, the right of succession of
daughters had to be quahfied, and made conditional
on their marrying in their own tribe {Numb, xxxvi).
Thus we have the first and greatest of legislators
establishing a rule to which he had speedily to make an
exception, and then an exception to that exception.
This example illustrates the diflficulty which is

THE NATURAL HISTORY OP LAW. 125

earliest felt in all legislation, and which is one of
the most finiitftil causes of the inexhaustibility of all
law, viz., the difficulty of provision for unknown cases
even when the states of facts out of which the cases
grow suffer no change m kirid. That this defect in
law is part of its natural history, and that no good
system of rules or laws can be framed except after
experience of a certain number of instances, can be
verijfied by any one who will take the trouble to
compare the rules for whist in Hoyle, or the few and
simple rules of the game of croquet when first in-
troduced, with the more elaborate regulations rendered
necessary by the numerous combinations which each
game has been found to present. The illustration
is homely, but is as pertinent as though it had been
taken from the Pandects or the Statutes at large.

This is the first difficulty; but as long as the circum-
stances of any given community remain the same, or
nearly the same, although the permutations of cases, like
those of the kaleidoscope, are endless, they are all of the
same kind, and after a certain number of experiences
the "wilderness of single instances'' can be classified
or arranged, or to adopt the legal phrase for the same
thing, codified. But the changes in every progressive
community not only produce new cases, of the same
kind, but cases of a different kind, just as the permuta-
tions of the kaleidoscope would be increased by an
increase in the number of objects introduced into it.
The law of every country in its origin most likely
expressed exactly the moral behefs of the community

126 ESSAY IV.

for which it was made, or at least of the governing
class of such community. The mental and moral con-
victions out of which the laws arose are succeeded by
different, perhaps opposite, behefs or circumstances,
and then the law is out of joint with the wishes or
wants of the community. It may be safely asserted
that there is no influence, either political, social,
rehgious, or inteUectual, which does not sooner or
later invaUdate, nay absolutely ruin some portion of
its existing law. Everybody recognizes this principle
in the coarser forms of pohtical revolution, but the
subtler influences of intellectual and scientific progress,
although equally powerful, are not so obvious. The
modern science of pohtical economy, has, in the last
quarter of a century, abohshed whole chapters of
English law — the statutes against forestalling and
regrating — the limitations on the rate of interest — the
restrictions on trade. Modern philanthropy has, in
the same time, completely changed our criminal code
from one of undue severity to one of undue laxity.
The extent of these destructive changes must be evident
to a cursory observer; to "abolish" and to "repeal"
are the commonest of pohtical phrases. Even Mr.
Buckle, who was not a cursory observer, was so
impressed with this tendency of modern society as
to declare that the best legislation consisted in aboUsh-
ing former legislation. He did not see that the very same
influences which are so destructive of former laws are
creating new departments of law, so that the sum total
of law, so far from being diminished by all these

THE NATURAL HISTOEY OF LAW. 127

influences, increases and multiplies with enormous
rapidity by reason of their operation. At the veiy
time Blackstone was pubhshing his Commentaries,
Watt was inventing the steam engine. The elegant
jurist would have been much astonished if he had
been told that this invention (which he woxdd have
regarded as a mechanical curiosity) would in the
space of a century create new departments of law
equal in extent to the whole body of English law
when Coke wrote his Commentary on Littleton, and
yet such has been the result. By increasing our
commerce and almost creating our manufactures, it
has enormously increased the bulk and complexity of
our commercial law; and in the single department
of railway law it has, within the last forty years,
added more than three thousand cases to the reports.
Nor are the consequences of scientific discoveries upon
legislation always indirect. It often happens that the
effect of such a discovery is to necessitate a direct
and immediate change in the law. The invention
of choloroform created a new agent of crime not con-
templated by the existing law, and was quickly followed
by a new statute (14 & 15 Vic, c. 19, s. 3) to provide
against cases which the old law could not foresee.

As with scientific discoveries, so also with social
influences. The changes in English law relating to
theft are an accurate test of the gradual increase in
value and importance of personal property in all its
forms consequent on the progress of commerce and
manufactures. In the early stage of our criminal law

128 ESSAY IV.

only those things which were capable of manual
abstraction, as money, jewels, household goods, or
the like, were within its provisions. No theft could
be committed on a chattel annexed to the soil, be-
cause, for feudal reasons, it partook of the nature of
the soil; nor of any such symbols of property as bills
and notes, because they were unknown to the ancient
law. Step by step, as each of these kinds of property
grew into importance, it was included in the circle of
things, the taking away of which was theft. Again,
the growth of large communities has rendered neces-
sary a whole body of law relating to social economy,
of which there was not a trace in our laws when
Blackstone wrote, and which, in its various phases of
promoting co-operation, regulating hours of labour,
providing for the health and education of the people,
occupies every year a larger share of the attention of
the legislature.

These instances of changes in laws being neces-
sitated by, and consequent upon, all the influences which
affect the community, are sufficient to establish the
fact. The next step is to ascertain the rationale of
this change, or in other words its natural history. It
must foUow from what has been already stated, that
the causes which produce changes in the laws of a
community are identical with those which produce
changes in the community itself — the former being a
secondary effect of the latter. What, then, is the
general order of change in a progressive society ? In
a remarkable essay on "Progress : its Law and Cause"

THE NATUKAL HISTORY OF LAW. 129

(since embodied in his " First Principles") Mr. Herbert
Spencer has stated it to be the transformation of the
homogeneous into the heterogeneous. This hypothesis
he has copiously illustrated by instances drawn from
the physical sciences, and I think it is capable of still
stronger confirmation from the history of law, which
he has only barely mentioned.

Applied to positive law, this hypothesis implies
that all the rights and duties which are now enforced
by the different (heterogeneous) sanctions of (1) positive
law, (2) common usage or public opinion, (3) conscience,
and (4) religion, were in their origin enforced only by
one and the same (homogeneous) sanction of law alone.
Or to restate it the converse way, the hypothesis im-
plies that the progress of society is the gradual evolu-
tion of these four different (heterogeneous) motives and
sanctions of human conduct from and out of the one
simple (homogeneous) motive and sanction of primeval
law. The Mosaic code furnishes an excellent illustration
of this part of the hypothesis. That such code was
homogeneous in the sense that it was intended to
include, and did include, the entire circle of human
rights and duties so far as they were then known
— that it was " the whole duty of man " to his
feUow-man and to his Maker — is a proposition
familiar to, and generally accepted by, most Bnghsh-
men. But the proposition being generally tacitly
agreed to on theological groimds, prevents the fact
being reahzed with the distinctness and clearness
necessary for an inquiry of this nature. Moreover,

130 ESSAY IV.

the significance of the fact is obscured in the minds
of most people who have derived their notions on this
subject only from bibUcal sources, by the modem
division of the laws of Moses into moral, civil, and
ceremonial. To us, these divisions are as obvious as
the division of night and day; but that only shows
how far our heterogeneity has gone. In the time of
Moses, and for centuries afterwards, these divisions
were as unknown and as incomprehensible as the
Copemican astronomy, or the undulatory theory of
hght. An ancient Jew would no more have understood
why we select the ten conmiandments and hang them
up in our churches, and dignify them with the title of
the moral law, than he would have comprehended the
distinction between law and equity as a modem Enghsh
lawyer understands it. To him, every commandment
was just as binding as every other — they were all
clauses of one act, were, in other words, homogeneous
in the nature of their obhgation — and the only dis-
tinction he could recognize would be that some
clauses were more difficult to observe than others.
If it be supposed that the ten commandments which
we now call the moral law are of universal obligation
in the sense that they ought to form part of every
good code of positive law, the most cursory comparison
with our modern legislation will show how different
our notions are. It wiU be conceded that, whether
the ten conmiandments were moral or not, they were
all prescribed as law, in the fullest sense of that term,
by Moses, and that a man could be punished as weU

THE NATURAL HISTORY OF LAW. 131

for idolatry as for murder, and for not honouring his
parents as for theft. What diflTerence there was in the
punishment was stiU more contrary to modem ideas, for
whilst theft (not committed at night) was punishable
only by fine {Ex. xxii, 1-4), disobedience to parents
was pimishable by death (Lev. xx, 9).

Turn now to the view which modern Enghsh law
takes of the duties — the legal duties be it observed —
prescribed by these commandments. Of the whole
ten^ only two, theft and murder, are prohibited under
the sanction of the criminal law. The duty of fiUal
obedience, then enforced by the extreme legal penalty,
is now enforced only by morality. The first and
second commandments have in England and the United
States passed altogether out of the sphere of positive
law, and are even passing out of the sphere of pubhc
morals into that of private conscience only. Here then,
the duties which Moses placed in a line of equal obh-
gation and importance, we have placed rank behind
rank in the difierent divisions of (1) legal obhgations
enforceable by legal penalties, (2) moral habits or
usages enforceable by the penalty of social discredit,
(3) conscientious or (4) rehgious obhgations enforce-
able only by conscience or ecclesiastical censures.

This instance is given because it is one famiUar to
us all, and it would be easy, did space permit, to show
that every system of law has been developed in pre-
cisely the same way, and that when first given forth
it was law, morahty, and religion in one — in a word, it
was homogeneous. Keeping close, however, to our

132 ESSAY TV.

chosen illustration, not, be it again observed, because
it is different, but only because its history is more
easily accessible than that of other systems of archaic
law, it will show us how the legal and moral elements
in it are gradually " differentiated " (the word is a little
pedantic, but there is no other which expresses the
process with equal exactness). We have seen that the
changes in a progressive society very speedily reveal
the fact that its law is inadequate and incomplete.
Case after case occurs for which the law does not pro-
vide; nor in a primitive state of society can the law
be readily altered so as to extend to and include such
cases. Even in an advanced state of society, where
representative institutions are in fiill operation, and
where, therefore, general opinion can be rapidly trans-
muted into formal law, the changes in the circum-
stances of society are constantly outgrowing the law.
But in ancient communities law was often unalterable
in an avowed and formal way. Sometimes this was
because, like the Mosaic law, it had an attribute of
sanctity attached to it, and sometimes because, like
the feudal system in England, it was kept up by the
influence of a dominant class long after the habits and
opinions of the rest of the community had entirely
changed the usages out of which it arose. What then
happens ? Without discussing the rival theories of the
intuitive and derivative sources of morals, the fact is
beyond dispute that by some test or other — be it
moral sense or utihty — all communities of men arrive
at some conclusion as to what ought to be done in

THE NATURAL HISTORY OF LAW. 133

cases for which no provision is made. The opinions
of society very rapidly estabhsh what may be called
a supplementary code to the pre-existing formal
law; and these opinions become usages or morals
in the original sense (mores) ^ or, as here termed,
public morality, as distinguished from abstract morality.
For example, if the question of the right of succession
in the case of Zelophehad before quoted had occurred
after the death of Moses, when formal and avowed
additions to the law were at first impossible, it would
have been decided in some way, perhaps by chance,
perhaps by some considerations of right or wrong.
Whichever way the question was solved, it would
establish a precedent in the mode of supplying the
defects of the actual law, and would at once differentiate
from proper positive law the rules made by usage
and precedent. It would be a great mistake to suppose
that the influence of precedents is confined to advanced
communities, or to legal records. An opinion or usage
which had its origin in chance may be followed for
ages, just as the course of a footpath may be fixed for
centuries by the wisdom or the whim of the first
rustic who deviated from the high road.

When a sufficient number of omitted cases have
occurred, and have been decided upon by pubhc opin-
ion or usage, so that there is a body of custom and
opinion differentiated from the code of positive law, a
further differentiation then takes place. Some of these
morahties are seen to be sufficiently sanctioned by in-
stinct, or pubhc opinion ; or if not, are of such a nature

134 ESSAY IV.

that to attempt to enforce them by law, would create
a great evil to cure a small one, as happened when
the republic of Geneva punished two bridesmaids for
dressing too gaily at a wedding. Certain other obli-
gations created by the changes of society, are, on the
contrary, seen to be as necessary to be enforced by
legal means as those obhgations which form part of
the pre-existing positive law. Now aU these rights
and duties which are not enforced by law, but which
ought to be so enforced, and to which, if the original
law had been framed with the benefit of subsequent
experience, the law would have extended, are sooner
or later made into positive law by a process now to
be described.

Let it be again remembered that everything we
now call law reform, i. e. conscious, intentional, and
avowed alteration of the law, was utterly impossible
in all archaic communities. Such a community was in
this dilemma, viz., that the law could not be altered
in any formal and avowed manner, and yet it was
absolutely necessary it should be altered. To take two
examples from two very different states of society. K
as we have seen, the Mosaic law needed alteration and
amendment in the lifetime of Moses himself, it must
a fortiori in the centuries which elapsed between his
death and the period of the captivity, have required
much greater alteration and extension. The original
code was intended to preserve the Jews as a nation,
every man of whom should be a landowner and a
soldier — a nation carefuUy separated by peculiar institu-

THE NATURAL HISTORY OP LAW. 135

tions from all its neighbours, without foreign relations,
without internal trade, or external commerce. The
element of contract which fills so large a space in
modern law is almost entirely absent from the Mosaic
code, and the few traces in which such are to be found,
are confined to some simple regulations as to the return
of pledges. In process of time the nation had become
everything which the Mosaic institutions were intended
to prevent its becoming. Its pecuHar system of land
tenure had ceased to be. The people had attained
prosperity by commerce, and suffered adversity by
foreign conquest, and all these changes must have neces-
sitated corresponding changes in their laws and morals.
But after the death of Moses it was impossible ostensibly
to alter the law to agree with their altered circumstances.
It was altered nevertheless : and the alteration was
brought about by the use of all the processes which
theologians call " development," which morahsts call
"casuistry," and which jurists call "legal fictions"
and " equity." All these are different names for, and
apphcations of, one principle, viz., the change princi-
pally by way of extension of a law or a doctrine under
pretence of expounding or administering it, until in
process of time — to recur to our former simile — a
series of patches has been substituted for every part
of the original garment; shape, size, colour, and
texture are all changed, but each change has been
effected so gradually, that it is not only unperceived,
but if the fact of any change be asserted, it is vehe-
mently denied. By all these processes, in the course

136 ESSAY IV.

of centuries a supplementary code, partly legal and
partly ethical, was gathered round the original
Mosaic laws, and the scanty original garment was
stretched and pieced so as to subserve the wants of a
state of society as diflTerent as possible from that for
which the code was originally framed. The process
resulted in .that wonderful compilation the Talmud,
which is beginning to be understood in England by
means of the interesting expositions of M. Emanuel
Deutsch.

The most pertinent example, however, which can
be given of the habits and usages (mores) or morahties
of society becoming indirectly and unavowedly incorpo-
rated into the existing law by means of the fictitious
assumption that they were already part of such existing
lawy is that of the English law of real property. Every-
body knows that this part of our jurisprudence is
founded on what is called the feudal system, and that
the fuU development of that system impHed two things :
first, the actual cultivation of the soil by either serfs or
husbandmen who had no ownership of the land;
secondly, the granting of ownership only on condition
of military service, each feudal tenant owing fealty to
his immediate superior, and the king being lord para-
mount of all. So far as the theory of the ownership
and transfer of land was concerned, feudahsm imphed
three principles. (1) That the ultimate ownership of all
the land in the country was vested in the king as head
of the state ; (2) that no other person than the king
could have any more than a certain status (estate) in the

THE NATURAL HISTOEY OF LAW. 137

land, i.e. that he could not have the same interest in it
as in a chair or a bag of money ; (3) that as the transfer
of the interest of every owner of land was not a mere
commercial transaction which only concerned himself,
but concerned also his feudal lord (and his feudal vassals
likewise, if he had subinfeudated), no such transfer
could be made by a secret transaction between the
seller and the purchaser, but only by means of an
outward and visible delivery of the possession, pubhc
in its nature, and requiring the consent of both lord
and vassal. Now the commercial theory as to land im-
phes the converse of aU these principles. It considers
land as an article of commerce in which the owner oughji
to have the entire and absolute interest, which interest
he ought to be at liberty to dispose of by some simple
form, as he would a bale of cotton, or a jewel, or a
picture. From the beginning of the thirteenth century
to the present time there has been a gradual substitution
of the commercial for the feudal element in this part of
our law. It began when the personal mihtary services,
which were then the only conditions of the ownership
of land, were first commuted for money payments, and
will not stop until landed property is assimilated to
personal property in all points but those in which there
is a difference in essence and substance. The pecuUarity
of the process was, that from the beginning of the
thirteenth century to the time of the Comjnonwealth
it was a gradual change of the law, on the theory that
it was not changed, but simply expounded and adminis-
tered. During this period the influence of the dominant

138 ESSAY IV.

class was sufficient to prevent any avowed and formal
change in the feudal element of our law, but the
gradually increasing influence of anti-feudalism, al-
though it was not powerful enough to produce a formal
and legislative change, was sufficiently powerful to
surround the feudal law with an element of fresh
usages, opinions, and institutions, which acted upon
it like a solvent, and gradually crumbled it away.

The extent to which this process of indirect change
was carried could only be adequately realized by a man
who died in the reign of Edward the Third, and who
should revive in the reign of Victoria, and inquire into
the nature of the transactions he might see in a con-
veyancer's chambers or a soUcitor's office. He would
be obliged to conclude from what he saw, that the law
of England had been entirely changed. He would see,
for example, a short document by which he would be
told that the entail of an estate was to be cut off,
and he would inquire when the statute of entails (13
Ed. I, A.D. 1285) was repealed. He would be told
that that statute was still in fiill force, but that, by
a contrivance invented two centuries after the statute
was passed, and gradually improved, its operation
might be, and was, invariably defeated. He would
notice catalogues of sale of large estates with no more
reservation of the rights of the crown, or of any other
feudal lord, than in sales of household furniture or
farming stock, and he would conclude that ownerships
in land had become allodial, i. e. absolute, like personal
property. He would, however, be told that there had

THE NATURAL HISTORY OF LAW. 139

been no sucli alteration, and that the doctrine of the
crown's absolute ownership was as much the basis
of the English land law as it was in the reign of
Edward the First, although only in the very rare case
of a man dying without any heirs whatever was it of
the smallest importance, nor did it ever diminish the
value of the largest estate by the smallest sum. Again,
he would see a document signed, and would be told that
by that act alone an estate had been sold from A to B,
and he would naturally inquire when it was that
the notoriety and actual delivery of possession re-
quired by the feudal system was dispensed with. He
would be told, to his great surprise, that this necessity
of notoriety and actual delivery of possession was still
the theory of the law ; but that, by a series of subtle
contrivances, whilst the theory was maintained, every
practical consequence of it was evaded, and that men
conveyed their estates by secret deeds, just as they
might transfer their chairs and tables.

By these ingenious contrivances the habits and
opinions of a nation, gradually advancing from feud-
ahsm to commercialism, have slowly surrounded and
modij&ed ancient principles by the fictitious assumption
that such habits and opinions were deductions from
such principles. To complete the history of the pro-
cess, it should be added that a time at last arrives in
which the community discovers that it is not worth
while to keep up the fiction of doing one thing under
pretence of doing another, and then the fiction is
abolished, and the formal law made to correspond with

140 ESSAY IV.

the actual practice, as was the case when, in the year
1844 (7 & 8 Vic, c. 76), the legislature first avowedly-
altered the common law principle of the necessity of
livery of seizin. Sooner or later it will do the same
with all the other relics of feudalism.

This gradual incorporation into the body of the
law of the changed habits and opinions of the nation
is only one of the many ways in which such habits
are constantly aflfecting the pre-existing law. Created,
be it remembered, by two causes, viz., the defect
in the law, and the change in the community, these
moral habits and opinions surround the law like an
atmosphere — press in upon it at every point, and
constantly and insensibly change and modify it, both
directly and indirectly. Another mode in which law
is constantly being modified, is the infusion into it of
what is called equity, or equitable interpretation. The
necessity of this kind of modification arises whenever
a case occurs which is not within the letter, but is
within the spirit of the existing law ; or, conversely,
is within the letter, but is not within the spirit. All
legal systems except our own have solved the difficulty
by giving the same tribunals who administer the law,
the power to make the necessary equitable modifications.
But, as Dr. Johnson has observed {Life of Frederichy
p. 39) — " To embarrass justice by multiplicity of laws,
or to hazard it by confidence in judges, seem to be the
opposite rocks on which all civil institutions have been
wrecked, and between which legislative (juridical)
wisdom has never yet found an open passage.'' In

THE NATURAL HISTORY OF LAW. 141

England alone, we have the singular and unique
spectacle of this equitable interference with law being
practically confined to the jurisdiction of the Court
of Chancery, and embodied in the creation of one
distinct department of law, instead of permeating and
controUing every other.

The reasons for this are altogether historical, and
have no foundation whatever in any natural division of
rights and duties. The original cause was that the
genius of the Enghsh people leads them to prefer
"embarrassing justice by a multipHcity of laws" rather
than "hazard it by reposing confidence in judges,"
a feeling which Lord Camden expressed in the saying,
" The discretion of the judge is the law of tyrants."
A secondary cause was that in the infancy of our legal
system, the three superior Courts of Common Law
were in reahty simply three sub-committees of the
King's Council, which exercised all supreme admin-
istrative and judicial fiinctions, and was, in fact, the
government in action. The Court of Exchequer took
cognizance of aU matters concerning the king's revenue
(a remnant of which original judicial jurisdiction
was exercised as late as the time of Sir Robert
Walpole, who as Chancellor of the Exchequer,
decided a cause on which the other judges were
equally divided). The Queen's Bench took cognizance
of all criminal matters, and the Common Pleas, of civil
actions between subject and subject. This division of
judicial work would have been perfect if the world had
stood still, and there had been no changes in society

142 ESSAY IV,

productive of cases which would not accommodate
themselves to these divisions. But society did not
stand still — ^whole classes of cases occurred for which
these three tribunals provided no remedy, and recourse
was had to the fiction of a supposed unexhausted pre-
rogative of equity and justice remaining in the king as
head of the state. The exercise of this was delegated
to the Chancellor, and so, step by step, the Court of
the Chancellor (Chancery) assumed the right and exer-
cised the power of redressing those wrongs which the
Courts of Common Law did not consider to be legal
injuries, e. g. breaches of trust as to landed property,
which the Courts of Law to this hour continue to
ignore, because originally trusts were illegal, as being
evasions of the feudal system.

To the historical origin of Enghsh equity is entirely
owing the anomahes which pervade every part of the
system. Unlike the equitable modifications of other
systems, it does not pretend to soften the rigour of
law in all cases, but only to supply the shortcomings
of the law in certain departments. What the depart-
ments are whose shortcomings are to be suppKed,
was determined by the wants of the community
and the defects of the law centuries ago; and
therefore it is that on the subjects within its juris-
diction the Court of Chancery enforces an almost
Quixotic morahty, and on other subjects affords no
redress for the most flagrant legal injustice. For
example, it continually makes trustees hable for acts
which are morally justifiable, and yet it never inter-

THE NATURAL HISTORY OF LAW. 143

posed to prevent' an owner of a large landed estate
devising it so as to defeat the just claims of his
creditors — an evil which an improved public morahty
has remedied by legislation. Hence it has happened
that in England, equity, in its original sense, as a
discretion vested in the tribunals to prevent justice
degenerating into injustice, is confined within very nar-
row hmits, and has become a department of law almost
as unexpansive and technical as the law it was originally
designed to supplement and correct. But in other
systems equity, and the appUcation of principles of
equitable interpretation, are the most powerful
means of accommodating law to the changes of society.
The vigorous satire of Swift in the Tale of a Tub,
how the three brothers found in their father's wiU
just what they wanted, is scarcely an exaggeration of
what has been done as well by lawyers as theologians
desirous to give to their own opinions the. sanction
of authority.

But neither the incorporation of the moral habits
and opinions of society into its pre-existing law,
nor the extension of that law by what is called equity,
exhaust the influences which the moral condition of
every community exercises over its law. Even when the
moral usages of any society are not powerful enough to
modify its law in either of the ways we have just noticed,
such usages always exercise a great influence upon the
administration of the law. Whenever the law does not
represent, or very nearly represent, the average tone and
feeling of the conmiunity, it is sure to be evaded,

144 ESSAY IV.

whether the moral standard of tHe community be
higher or lower than the law itself. When the criminal
code in this country was unduly severe, jimes con-
stantly reiused to convict for offences which were —
but which they thought ought not to be — capital
crimes. The morality of the community had out-
grown the law. Wherever, on the other hand, enthu-
siastic reformers, like Draco at Athens, or Calvin at
Geneva, or the Puritans in the New England States, have
endeavoured to efface the distinction (which has been
shown to be part of its natural history) between law,
moraUty, and reUgion, and to re-estabhsh a kind of
theocracy, in which all duties, legal, moral, and reli-
gious, should be enforced by legal penalties — the
attempt has ultimately failed. The law is maintained
at a working level only when it is supported by the
moral convictions of the community. This is suffi-
ciently evidenced by what is passing before our eyes
at the present moment, both in Ireland and England.
In Ireland it is impossible to enforce the laws against
agrarian outrages, and in England to procure convic-
tions for bribery on evidence which would be sufficient
to prove any other crime, because the people do not
regard either as a grave moral, as well as a legal,
offence.

Hitherto we have discussed the means by which
the law of any particular country becomes modified
by its moral habits and opinions. Another differentia-
tion has now to be considered. These moral habits
and opinions which originally grew up around its law

THE NATUEAL HISTORY OF LAW. 145

are liable in a lesser degree to the imperfections of the
original law. In a progressive society tliey are always
beiQg supplanted by something better, and then, in
addition to the diverse standards of (1) positive law,
(2) common moraUty, i. e. mores, or the habits and
opinions of society, we get another standard — that of
morals or ethics, of which the private conscience, and
not pubKc opinion, is the test. This is in the first
instance evolved out of common morahty, as that is
fi:*om law, and in its turn re-acts upon and modifies
both. Perhaps the best example which can be given
of this higher moraUty is that of the creation and
extension of what is termed international law.

By law, or rather by the absence of it, there were
at the time Grotius wrote, no bounds to the cruelty of
war. It is his glory to have created an international
pubHc opinion or morality on the basis, that, although
wars were just and necessary, still even enemies
had rights which it was immoral to inMnge. This,
which was at first an ethical argument of a solitary
thinker, by its inherent merits grew to be the general
opinion of the governing classes of Europe, and is now
so universally recognized that it has taken the name
and in some respects has the force of law. But this
international morahty, or law, as it is called, is always
being modified and improved by the constant improve-
ment in the ethical opinions out of which it has its
origin, and being in its nature more indefinite and ex-
pansive than pure positive law, is more susceptible
of modification. For example, the Hmitations of bel-

L

146 ESSAY IV.

ligerent rights, and the concessions to neutrals which
would have satisfied Grotius, and which have been
embodied in the decisions of the Prize Courts of Eng-
land, and of the United States, will not satisfy the
higher moraUty of to-day. No instance could more
exactly illustrate this, than the Declaration which our
own Government foimd it necessary to issue concur-
rently with the proclamation of war against Russia, on
the 28th of March, 1854, to the effect that, whilst it
maintained the right to do so, it would not seize the
enemy's property on board neutral vessels, nor issue
letters of marque. In other words, this meant that
the public opinion of Europe had advanced a stage
beyond that which was embodied in its international
law. The next step was to formahze this advanced
opinion, as was done in the subsequent Declaration of
Paris, 16th April, 1856. The advance has only made
way for the proposal now being discussed, of the
entire exemption firom capture of private property not
being contraband of war. The course of the gradual
development of the doctrines of international law, exactly
illustrates the method by which aU advances in morality
act first upon the opinions, then the usages, and then
(vires acquirit eundo) on the laws of any particular
community. What Grotius did for international morality
the Areopagitica of Milton accomplished for the fi^eedorii
of the press, and the Liberty of Prophesying of Jeremy
Taylor, and the Letter on Toleration of Locke, for the
freedom of religious opinion. The influence of such
writings is slow but sure, and they ultimately leave a

THE NATUEAL HISTORY OF LAW. 147

more conspicuous mark on future legislation than on
the literature of their own time.

Concurrently with these evolutions of morality out
of the imperfections of law, and of a still stricter
morality out of the general customs of society, another
evolution, equally fruitful in its consequences, goes
on, viz. : the differentiation of the sacred from the
secular, as to their respective spheres of right and
duty. Everywhere, in archaic history, the King and the
Priest, the Church and the State, are united (homo-
geneous). So long as the reUgion is a mere cultus,
having no doctrinal or ethical teaching — of which kind
of rehgion Greece and Rome afford familiar examples —
the union in one person of the kingly and priestly
ofl&ces is simply a question of division of labour and
of function, having no more influence on the develop-
ment of law than any other division of labour, and is
therefore outside the scope of our present purpose.
But whenever any rehgion, in addition to being a
cultus, is also a system of law or doctrine, such as are
Judaism, Christianity, Islamism, then a differentiation
is sooner or later sure to happen, between the two
systems of conduct which we represent by the words
Church and State. Whichever is for the time being
the most powerful will seek to impress its pecuHarities
on the other. The striking example of the flux and
reflux of ecclesiastical and secular influences afforded
by the marriage question will suffice by way of illus-
tration. The merely secular view of marriage is, that
it is a contract with which civil society has nothing

148 ESSAY TV.

more to do, than to insist on such formalities being
observed as shall insure absolute certainty of the fact
of such a contract having been made, because, from
its nature, it not only concerns the contracting parties
themselves, but their offspring, and therefore the
whole community. It logically follows, from the mere
contract point of view, that when the purpose and
intent of the contract become impossible, such contract
ought (regard being had to the interests of the com-
munity) to be modified or altogether dissolved. The
ecclesiastical theory regards marriage as a sacramental
obhgation, which can be validly contracted only with the
sanction of the Church, and which, when so contracted,
is indissoluble, except for the reasons, and in the mode,
which the Church prescribes. The slightest reflection
will suflBce to show that the logical deductions from
these different theories, will result in conclusions wide
as the poles asunder. In Enghsh law, until latterly,
the ecclesiastical view has generally prevailed over the
secular, but never entirely. For instance, until the
year 1843, it was always disputed whether, according
to the English common law, the intervention of a
priest was necessary to a valid marriage, and although
in that year the judges unanimously advised the House
of Lords (in the case of The Queen v. Millis) that it
was so, the authorities were so evenly balanced, that
the Law Lords were divided in opinion. In the reign
of Edward IV, the Ecclesiastical Courts, under the
influence of the early reformers, for a short time, ex-
pressly disclaimed the sacramental theory; but, in

THE NATUBAL HISTOBY OF LAW. 149

the following reign, the doctrine of the indissolubility
of marriage by the ordinary process of law was restored.
Even when this was settled law, the legislature re-
served and exercised the power of altering it in certain
cases by special laws, i. e. private divorce acts.

The secular or purely contractual view of marriage
was first apphed to the mode of contracting the relation
by the Marriage Act of 1835, since which, marriage can
be entered into without the intervention of a priest, and
(if the contracting parties are so destitute of sentiment
as to prefer that mode) with as entire an absence of
reUgious ceremony as the contract for their house or
their furniture. More than twenty years had to elapse
before the same secular principle was apphed to the
dissolution of the contract. Even when the legislature
had disclaimed the sacramental theory, so far as the
constitution of the contract was concerned, it left it in
full force as to all the consequences of the contract.
The Ecclesiastical Courts, on ecclesiastical grounds,
declined to dissolve any marriage except for reasons
which proved that it never existed in fact, but only in
form and appearance. The same ecclesiastical view
governed the secular courts in their construction of
voluntary agreements of separation. They were de-
clared illegal and invaUd as regarded the married
persons^ but, with a strange inconsistency, were en-
forced as arrangements of their property^ if and only
as long as, the separation was an actual fact. By the
Divorce Act of 1857 the secular principle has been
partially applied to the regulation and dissolution of

150 ESSAY IV.

the contract, as well as to its original constitution.
Following the same view, it has been decided that the
former doubts cast on the vaUdity of voluntary separa-
tions were remnants of ecclesiastical doctrine which
have now ceased to have any legal vaUdity. It is
needless to point out that every such alteration differen-
tiates law from rehgion, and furnishes each individual
with a diflFerent rule of action, according as he obeys
the standard of the State or the Church. Every
lawyer of experience knows cases in which ecclesiastical
and theological views as to the sacramental nature of
marriage have prevented both husbands and wives
taking advantage of the law. This fluctuation of
opinion on the marriage question in the most en-
lightened country in Europe, is only one example of a
conflict which is going on in all countries, and on all
questions by which rehgious or ecclesiastical interests
are affected. Questions of national education, and even
of the Irish land tenure, are discussed by the con-
tending parties, from the different platforms of secular
and ecclesiastical interests, and so the heterogeneity of
the influences by which modern legislation is effected is
increased.

Thus far we have shown the development of law to
be very much like the evolution of matter according to
the nebular hypothesis. From the sphere of primitive
archaic law is thrown off, or evolved, a sphere of
secondary and supplemental opinions, which become
customs (mores) or conventional morals. Out of these
again is evolved another and better morality than is

THE NATUitAL HISTOEY OP LAW. 151

supplied by the common practice of mankind, and
beyond aU these circles is a different one, embodying
the beliefs, and consecrated by the sanctions of rehgion.
So much for the law itself. Let us now turn to
the consideration of the similar evolution which has
taken place in the rights and duties of the persons
subject to the law. On this part of the question it is
no paradox, but a literal truth, that the transformation
of the homogeneous into the heterogeneous has been
so complete, that it requires a strong effort of the
imagination, or more than ordinary knowledge, to
understand how it could ever have been otherwise.
Our modem conception of society is so saturated
with what has been called "the individuahty of the
individual,'* that until recently it was taken for granted
that all communities were originally formed by the
volimtary association, at some remote period of time,
of individuals, each exercising a right of private judg-
ment as to the terms on which they would join the
others. The Social Contract of Rousseau was simply
a definite statement of this theory, which was, so to
speak, held in solution, in the current notions of the
origin and nature of society current in the eighteenth
century. We now know that such a conception is
viewing the facts through the wrong end of the
historical telescope, and pushing back into the dawn
of social history what is in truth its latest development.
We know that instead of the development of society
being from the unit man through the family — the
gens and the tribe — so far as all questions of law and

152 ESSAY IV.

property are concerned, the tribe was the earliest and
only conception, and out of the common ownership
of the tribe was gradually separated that of the
family, and out of that of the family, that of the indi-
vidual. The steps of this progress will be found
explained in Maine's Ancient Law, and with still
greater minuteness in M. Lennan's Primitive Marriage.
It rather concerns the purpose of this essav to show,
that e.erj step of this'^^grese is the g.L„al sub-
stitution of the heterogeneous relation which the
individual voluntarily makes for himself by contract,
for the homogeneous relations which all systems of
archaic law imperatively impose upon him. Nor is
this a matter of mere antiquarianism, for the very same
processes which have, in European coimtries at least,
obliterated the distinction of caste, and aboHshed
slavery, are at work before our eyes with increasing
intensity. This progress is described by jurists as
the transition from Status to Contract. In every
ancient system of law the rights and duties of each
individual (if it be advanced enough to recognise an
individual) are fixed by the law itself, and he can
acquire few or no rights by his own act. All law is
in its beginning imperative, and only imperative. As
Mr. Bagehot in his Essays on Physics and Politics,
acutely remarks, this quaUty is its most pressing
necessity and best justification. In the primitive
state the slave has no rights against his master, the
father has the power of life and death over his children,
the wife is in entire subjection to her lord, and kings

THE NATUEAL HISTOEY OF LAW. 153

are despotic over their subjects. That is to say — to
adopt the juridical expression — the slave, the child,
the wife, or the subject, stand in a certain relation or
condition (status) to the others, fixed by the law and
not by themselves. This iron inflexible reign of law,
hke severe drilling, is the only mode in which com-
munities, or armies, can be disciplined into obedience.
The first note of its relaxation, is the inception of the
idea of contract. To us this seems the most elementary
of all conceptions, because the rights and obUgations we
create for ourselves are infinitely more complex and
important than those the law imposes upon us. A
little patient thought will make it clear that this con-
ception, elementary as it looks, could only have been
possible in a very advanced stage of legal progress.
What is a contract in its essence? It is a special
law between the two contracting parties, of which they
dictate the terms, and the law adds the sanction or,
in other words, enforces the performance. It is utterly
foreign to the original conception of law, as an im-
perative system, that it should, as it were, yoke its
sanctions to the service not only of the reasonable
desires but even the caprices of men. Ancient law of,
and by, and in itself prescribed all the then known
rights and duties of men, and utterly denied them the
power to vary those rights and duties by agreement.
The great discovery (for such, in truth, it was) that
the law might be made to serve as well as to rule, has
been as fi:uitful in its results in the juridical progress
of mankind as the discovery and apphcation of the

154 ESSAT IV.

steam engine has in its material progress. The
difficnliy for us, is to conceive what a purely imperative
system of law was. Some &mt idea may be obtained
by reference to our stock illustration of the laws of
Moses. Those laws were made for a state of societv
much in advance of a primitive condition, but the most
cursory perusal wiU show how small was then the
sphere of contract, and how pervading was the contrary
idea of status. The land was to belong to the tribes,
and the power of disposition was circumscribed within
the narrowest limits : and just as has been shown to
be the case in the feudal system, the land did not
belong to the tenant, but he rather belonged to, or had
a certain status in it. All the other relations of a
man's legal existence, whether to his wife, to his
children, to his priest, or to his nation, were fixed
imperatively by the law. Only in the two operations of
sales and pledges was there any provision for contracts
at all, and how little such relations had to do with the
daily life of the people, may be judged of by the fact,
that the law is altogether silent on the solemnities of
a contract. We gather from two incidental notices
in the historical books, that the casting of the shoe
was the ceremony which served for legal authentication
of a transaction ; and whoever will read Mr. Maine's
chapter on the Early History of Contract will be satis-
fied that all such ceremonies mark early stages in the
growth of the idea of contract. This idea begins by
attaching importance only to the solemnities which
accompany the mutual promises which make a contract.

THE NATURAL HISTORY OP LAW. 155

Gradually, the solemnities diminisli in importance, and
the notion that it is the mutual engagement which
makes the contract, becomes first, a doctrine in morals,
and then a principle in law. All solenmities are then
viewed in their true hght, as modes of authentification
of a contract, and not as the contract itself.

Now it cannot be too strongly insisted upon that
this enlargement of the sphere of contract — ^in other
words, the perjnitting people to make laws for them-
selves, in almost all matters which concern their personal
interests — ^is the great difference between ancient and
modem times. In the history of our own country, in
whatever direction we look, the operation of this prin-
ciple is evident. What is in brief the history of the
Enghsh Constitution? Is it not the gradual substi-

•

tution, by such agreements, between the king and
subjects, as the Great Charter, the Petition of Right,
and the Bill of Rights, of certain defined and therefore
restricted powers, for the powers arising out of the
original status of king and subject — powers which
were restricted only by the physical force which each
had at his command, and instead of being defined were
(as Gibbon, paraphrasing Tacitus, says of the Germans
and Sarmatians) "faintly marked by their mutual
fears." Nor must it be supposed because, politically,
the advance from status to contract was complete at
the revolution, that it is an influence which has ceased
to operate actively. On the contrary, we have seen
within the last ten years tlie largest strides ever made
fi^om status to contract, in the emancipation of

156 ESSAY IV.

4,000,000 of slaves by the civil war in the United
States, and in the general abolition of serfdom in Russia.
Although in England this abolition of serfdom was
effected centuries ago, the same principle is stiU one of
the most vital and active elements of social change.
The great and increasing attention to our land laws is
simply an attempt to substitute contract, and all its
corollaries, for the remnants of feudaUsm which still
remain embedded in our legal system. The only
personal relation to which the doctrine of status in its
old sense now applies, viz., that of husband and wife, is
undergoing a similar modification. By the theory of
the law the relation of a wife to her husband is one of
status, that is to say, after marriage she has no longer
any independent legal existence, but simply a sort of
relation (status) to him. This theory of our law comes
down to us* from a time when all relations between
superiors and inferiors were those of status, when the
paternal power was absolute, and the relation of em-
ployer and employed was then that of master and
slave. What is demanded by way of alteration is, that
marriage shaU leave the rights of the wife just as they
were, except so far as she may choose to vary them by
a voluntary contract with her husband. In other
words, to substitute the relation of contract for that
of status.

In the preceding remarks the different elements of
positive law, modified first by the habits and opinions
of the community, and then by the higher morahty,
sometimes of abstract ethics, and sometimes of reUgion,

THE NATURAL HISTORY OP LAW. 157

have been considered only in their relation to what
may be called svhstantive law — that is, what is to be
administered. Nothing has been yet said as to adjective
law, that is by what tribunals and in what mode — in
a word, how the law is to be administered. Everything
which has been said as to substantive law applies to
this also. All the influences which afiect the law
itself also affect its operation and administration.
Enough, however, has been written to show that the
popular view of the nature and origin of law is alto-
gether erroneous, and that really good legislation is a
work of enormous complexity and difficulty, and even
when well done at first is always being undone by the
heterogeneous influences of, and changes in, morahty,
and religion, and by the disintegrating influences of the
constant evolution of individual rights. Much can be
done in the arrangement and simplification of the mass
of miscellaneous rubbish which has been accumulated
by the constant collision of ancient law with varying
custom, and changing morals and religion, and this
must be done quickly if we are to have any certainty
or intelligibiUty in our law at all. In any such effort
it is of the utmost importance clearly to understand
how positive law has its ultimate origin in human
nature, and the extent to which it must be affected by
everything which influences the community itself. AU
legal fictions and indirect modes of accommodating
an apparently fixed law to a changing society may
then be cleared away, and a firank recognition given
to the fact that law itself does, and must, change.

158 ESSAY IV.

In this point of view, the extension of representative
institutions, by enabling the moral habits and opinions
of the community to manifest themselves directly in
legislation, instead of affecting law through the
cumbrous and indirect methods which have been
described, will be an inestimable advantage. When,
however, every possible simplification and improvement
of law has been made, the ideal of justice and equity
will only be approached, but never quite reached,
because, to adopt a simile of Burke, these ideal rights
" entering into common life, like rays of light which
pierce into a dense medium, are by the laws of nature
refracted from their straight Une."

G. J. JOHNSON.

Note. — In the foregoing pages I have assumed the
truth of the popular view that the laws of Moses, as
we have them, are all contemporaneous. I am well
aware that a very different view is taken by some
eminent modem biblical critics. The pertinence of the
illustrations I have used does not depend on either
view. They are relevant on the popular theory : they
are equally so on the critical theory.

ESSAY V.

THE FUTURE OF WOMEN.

"Deal with us nobly, women thongli we be;
And honour us with truth, if not with praise."

THERE are few questions on which it is more
difl&cult to form a correct judgment, than those
which relate to the rights and wrongs of women. The
distorted medium through which we so often regard
them, the supposed truisms which long custom almost
obUges us to accept without remark, the mass of feeling
which we meet with on the threshold of any inquiry, and
the intense and incredible prejudice with which sugges-
tions are received which are not in accordance with
inveterate usage, aU tend to increase the diJB&culties
of honest criticism, and cause no Httle perplexity to
the dispassionate observer. I suppose there are few
persons who view the present social relations between
the two sexes with perfect complacency. We are told
on the one hand that men are superior to women;
superior in strength — ^physical, moral, and intellectual;

160 ESSAY V.

" superior in every sense in which one class of beings
can be superior to another." That in family govern-
ment the husband ought to be king, and that "the
most normal and honourable course of life for a woman
is that of wife and mother:" that those who do not
follow such a course of life " should be regarded as
exceptional persons; and that the law should be based
on principles adapted for the case of those who do,
and not for those who do not."^^* There can be no
doubt that this view, allowing for some differences of
opinion as to the meaning of the term " superiority,"
is one that in the main commends itself to the majority
of men. On the other hand, we have the expressed
opinions of some of the ablest living persons of both
sexes, that such ideas are untrue as well as imjust;
and the distinguished champion of the rights of women
has contended with no less eloquence than force that
the "legal subordination of one sex to the other is
wrong in itself, and now one of the chief hindrances
to human improvement; and that it ought to be
replaced by a principle of perfect equality, admitting
no power or privilege on the one side, nor disabiHty
on the other. "^^* There can be no doubt that his
views commend themselves to a large minority of
women, and to many male leaders of public opinion
in this country.

The advocates of male privilege however, are for
the present masters of the situation. They have made
the laws which women are bound to obey. They have
constructed the social system to which women are

THE FUTURE OF WOMEN. 161

expected to conform. They are responsible for the
maintenance of the political and educational monopohes
at which women have been so long gazing with eager
and wistful eyes.

The behef in the general superiority of men, dating
from times long passed, and confirmed and strengthened
by habit, if not by reflection ; the inferior position of
women in the eye of the law; their exclusion from
some of the graver pursuits of Ufe, for which men
only are believed to be fitted, and the palpable in-
feriority in their general education, have produced the
results which might naturally have been anticipated.

Archbishop Whately is said to have described a
woman, as " a creature who is unable to reason, and
who pokes the fire from the top." The studied separ-
ation of boys and girls in the pursuits of early life,
gives the former a contempt for female vocations, and
induces an idea of superiority, which seldom leaves
them in after years. The desire of some women for
a higher intellectual training and a greater social
freedom, although sometimes urged with a too passion-
ate exaggeration which defeats its own object, is
often treated with a flippancy and insolence not only
heartless but cruel; and their claims to share in the
work or even to help to mould the convictions of
the other sex, are ignored by men whose folly is
unfathomable, and who yet feel serenely conscious of
their own superiority.

A man's estimate of women, of their various
capacities, of their moral and intellectual nature, can

M

162 ESSAY V.

only be truly formed by the study of the two or three
he may have intimately known. Two of the greatest
writers, possibly the two clearest and most original
thinkers of the time, have thus written of their dead
wives.

"Her great and loying heart, her noble soul, her dear, powerful,
origina], and comprehensiye intellect, made her the guide and support,
the instructor in wisdom, the example in goodness, as she was the chief
earthly delight of those who had the happiness to belong to her."

These words were written by Mr. J. S. Mill on
the tomb of his wife at Avignon.

** In her bright existence she had more sorrows than are common,
but also a soft invincibility, a clearness of discernment, and a noble
loyalty of heart, which are rare. For forty years she was the true and
loving help-mate of her husband, and by act and word unweariedly for-
warded him as none else could in all of worthy that he did or attempted."

These words were written by Mr. Thomas Carlyle
on the tomb of his wife at Chelsea.

If we could but isolate ourselves from the habits
and modes of thought of to-day; if instead of being
bound by custom or the traditions of old times, or
the opinion of the majority, we were to accept
nothing on authority, but were to endeavour to evolve
by whatever light might be within us, a system of
relationship between the sexes, best fitted for modern
society, which of the two conflicting theories should
we adopt ? Which would be most in accordance with
the requirements and necessities of mankind? The
question is of great importance, and requires in more
than an ordinary degree an open and unbiased mind.

THE FUTURE OF WOMEN. 163

It is certain, however, that the progressive charac-
teristics of the age are not confined to one sex. Some
changes in the existing modes of thought are immi-
nent, and some readjustment of the relations of the
sexes is rapidly becoming a necessity of the times.

What is the true place of women in the social
order? What are the aims, noble or ignoble, which
it is the object of their hves to gain ? It is not a
little remarkable that we should be always finding it
necessary to construct a theory about them. Men do
not give themselves much trouble to account for their
own existence. Books are not written to point out
their exact position and influence in society. They
accept the situation. Their lives are spent in turning
to the best possible account the various occupations to
which nature, or necessity, or education, has called
them. But with regard to women we are always
constructing theories, and our theories are based upon
our conception of an ideal.

There are only two ideals. The one is that of
woman in relation to man — ^the other in relation to
herself. The one is founded on the biblical story that
a rib was taken fi^om Adam while he slept. It assumes
that as woman first formed part of man's physical
nature, so her mission is to be his complement — a
helpmeet,

"A Link among the days, to knit
The generations each with each,"

a companion, a housewife, not unfrequently a slave.
This is the complementary or rib theory of woman.

164 ESSAY V.

The other is founded on the belief that woman is
to be the founder of her own destiny, and the arbitress
of her own happiness; that she has what more than
one rehgious system has denied her — a soul ; that she
has to find her way to God by the use of her own
intellect and conscience; and that so far only as she
can do this uninfluenced and unfettered, is she likely
to fulfil the requirements of her highest nature, and
to obtain her ultimate reward. This is the individual
or independent theory.

The former theory has different phases, depending
upon the higher or lower degree of civilization of those
who hold it. In early and barbarous times, when the
right of the strongest was the only law of life, woman
was prized only in proportion to her physical powers.
In one capacity she was simply a slave of the most
pitiful kind; in another her life was one long round
of "continual, abject, and unrequited toil." In a
sparsely populated country, could she bear many
children ; if the nation was warUke could she train
them when young to purposes of usefulness to the
state? If so she fulfilled the requirements and con-
formed to the standard of the age. But if not, her
life was a blank, she was an encumbrance rather than
a helpmate, she was under a reproach among women.
One of the greatest of Greek historians did not
hesitate to afl&rm that the highest merit of woman
was to be " not spoken of either for good or for evil."'^^

As civilization advanced, the purely physical part of
the dependent theory was found no longer tenable.

THE FUTURE OF WOMEN. 165

Womaii's sphere became domestic, but her mission was
still to minister to the wants and comforts of men. Any
higher impulses were discouraged. Longings after a
more stirring existence were sedulously put down. Any
attempt to take a part, however humble, in active life,
in those things which gave such Tariety and interest
and charm to the hves of her father or brothers, was
treated either with coldness or contempt. Women
must be modest and retiring, any indication of power
was unfeminine, any acquaintance with books was
distinguished only to be censured, genius was out of
place. A woman, says a writer at the commencement
of the present century, " must have uncommon sweet-
ness of disposition and manners to be forgiven for
possessing superior talents and acquirements."^*^ It
is not fifty years since, says Miss Lucy Aiken, that
"Dr. Gregory left as a legacy to his daughters the
injunction to conceal their wit and even their good
sense, because it would disgust the sex they were bom
to please.''

In more modem times the dependent theory has
been largely modified. Women have developed into
social beings of a high order, and therefore a little
art, or a little literature, or a little philanthropy, is
added by a considerate age to the other recognized
ingredients which make up their common life; but
still man's interest is the key note, in unison with
which all womanly chords must vibrate, his happiness
is her raison d^etre.

In a recent number of the Quarterly Bevieiv, a

166 ESSAY V.

joiimal which may be taken to represent the thoughts
and opinions of a large class of highly educated
Englishmen, and in an article which contains much
practical wisdom, the following sentences occur.

" The sphere of woman is home. Such a cultivation as wiU make a
really good wife, sister, or daughter, to educated men, is the thing to
be aimed at." "Sensible men will always prefer that the good sense
and cultivation of women should have come through channels which
they recognize as suitable for the womanly character. England is not
prepared for either female suffrage, or a female Parliament, for women as ^
Poor Law Guardians, attendants at vestries, public speakers, public
lecturers, doctors, lawyers, clergy, or even to any much greater extent
tha/n at present as aiUhors** "The duties of women do not to any
great extent lie in the intellectual direction." " Marriage, domestic and
social duties, education and charitable works, are the true ends of
women*s existence." *fi)

It is sufficiently obvious that there is a growing
feehng of revulsion against the theory of the absolute
subjection of women. Universal custom is in its
favour. Precedent and authority are enlisted in its
behalf. But the preachers of the new faith are
appealing to the higher nature of both . sexes with a
genuine enthusiasm which challenges our admiration,
if not our assent.

They will be certain to make themselves heard.
The time for ridicule is passed. Their cause has come
up for judgment, supported by advocates of tried com-
petency and of invincible courage. The position of
the female seceders from the orthodox ideas is not
very difficult to understand. They repel with a fixed
determination, and not without a certain satire, the
prevailing idea that the main object of their exist-

THE FUTURE OF WOMEN. 167

enoe is to please men. They decUne to believe that
it is in the Providence of God that one-half of the
human race, with hopes as wide, with aspirations as
lofty, and with souls equally immortal, should be created
only to minister to the pleasures, to the necessities, or
even to the highest aims of the other half. They
admit that home duties, the cares of maternity, and
domestic or social relations, form the first and perhaps
the main object of their hves, but they demand the
right of mixing to a greater extent in the active life
of the world. They point out that there are countless
thousands of their sex who have no adequate means of
employment, and who are leading useless and wasted
Hves. They lament that the supposed dififerences
between the sexes have left them in a position of
hopeless and helpless inferiority, to the marked
detriment of their own nature and capacity, whilst
beyond all doubt it has tended to increase the vast
area of the selfishness of men; and they urge that
if the fi'ee use of their faculties is awarded to them,
together with a firee choice of their occupations, and
a higher and better education, not only would great
suflTering disappear, to be replaced by a healthy and
honourable activity, but that the mass of mental
faculties which is now available for the service of
mankind would be largely iiicreased.

I have said that the rights and wrongs of women
demand, in no ordinary degree, an impartial and im-
biased consideration. I propose to inquire to what
extent and in what manner our prevailing modes of

168 ESSAY V.

thought with regard to women might be varied with
advantage to them, and with^ gain to the state. In
doing so, I venture to record my protest against the
unworthy gibes with which those who have dealt with
this subject are so painfully femiliar. Surely it is
possible to treat questions of such general interest
and importance with a certain lucidity of mental
atmosphere; to criticise without prejudice, to praise
without servihty, and, if need be, to censure without
passion.

It is fortunate that we possess a starting point on
which all parties are agreed. Women are physically
inferior to men, greatly and unmistakably inferior.
No advocate of women's rights has ever urged that
they should become soldiers or sailors, that they
should be eligible for admission into the Fire Brigade
or the Pohce Force. The Amazon has always
been considered by both sexes as a poetic mon-
strosity. This physical inferiority is of greater
importance than many women are prepared to allow.
It involves the assumption that in that large class of
occupations requiring physical power, by means of
which so many men obtain a hveUhood, and in all
other pursuits, even of a purely intellectual character,
where prolonged effort or continuous exertion is
necessary to command success, women are unfitted
to succeed, or at least can only attain to so moderate
a degree of excellence that the ordinary laws of
competition will drive them out of the field. This
inferiority is both permanent and certain. No training,

THE FUTURE OF WOMEN. 169

or exercise, or physical development will make up
for the inevitable deficiency, or change the existing
state of things. It is idle to war with the impossible—
to attempt to subdue physiology. The difference is a
physical difference, and any system which assumes
the perfect equality of the sexes on this point, or
any systena of culture or education which fails to
address itself to these palpable differences, is certain
to be productive of irreparable harm. It is enough
that grace and lovehness are equally important with
strength in the economy of mankind; and that force
of character does not necessarily depend on physical
power. One sex naturally supplements the short
comings of the other.

With regard to the mental faculties, the word
"inferiority" is probably not the term to use. There
are some who say that the brain of the average man
is larger than that of the average woman, but this
assertion has been constantly denied. In most cases
where experts are called to give evidence there is
plenty of testimony on both sides. Assuming the fact,
we have still to determine the degrees of quahty as
well as quantity, and the exact relations between the
brain and the intellectual powers. The only satisfactory
test of general female capacity is that of observation.
Now, it is beyond all doubt that in all ages and in all
countries women of the highest order of genius have
been extremely rare. " No woman has ever been a
great mathematician; no production in philosophy or
science entitled to the first rank has ever been the

170 ESSAY V.

work of a woman." No great work on theology from
a woman's hand has been added to the Kterature of
any age. We have had no great female poet, and,
more remarkable still, no female Handel, Mendelssohn,
Beethoven, or Mozart.

Mr. Mill tells us that our judgment should be held
in abeyance, for upon these points experience has not
afforded us sufficient grounds for induction. But
I venture to think that his opinion is opposed to
evidence not only ample in its amount, but extending
over a sufficiently long period of time. To put Sappho
in the same rank as -^schylus or Sophocles, and to
argue that Socrates sometimes resorted to Aspasia
for instruction, seems to exhibit the weakness of the
cause which he so eloquently defends. Observation
convinces us that women are deficient in those ele-
ments of genius which consist of originaUty or creative
power, while they possess in a high degree those
other elements of genius which consist of intuition,
perception, and even administrative capacity.

The question then arises, are such differences
innate, or are they to any extent the result of that
position of inferiority and dependence to which women
for so many ages have been ruthlessly condemned ?

Assuming, as the fact is, that as a rule women
are less original, less logical, less powerful, less thought-
ful than men are, is it not possible that the various
social influences to which they have been subjected
have created the differences which everyone observes ?
We have shut them out from many occupations which

THE FUTURE OF WOMEN. . 171

would have developed their character, and possibly would
either have produced or have strengthened quaUties in
which they are now deficient. It is an admitted fact
that the result of many of the diflferences between male
and female nature are distinctly traceable to systematic
differences of education. For a long course of years
from their earliest childhood, it has been impressed
upon women that they are naturally inferior to men,
that they are unfitted to mingle in the active life of
the world, but that there .are specific duties of a
domestic and social character in which they are alone
fitted to excel, and which therefore ought to form the
sole aim of their lives. Having so trained and edu-
cated them, and having carefully cut them off from
the means of forming just conclusions for themselves,
we point to the creatures of our own creating, and
with an almost incredible meanness we quote the
results of our own system of training, as arguments
to prove the natural incapacity of the sex to share
in any of the higher aims of life which we have
arrogated exclusively to ourselves.

But this is not all. It is not only that we have
impressed upon women from childhood the prevaiUng
ideal. There are instincts in us, as Miss Cobbe has
pointed out, deeper than any conscious or unconscious
imitation of a type.^^^ We are born both sexes alike,
inheriting to a very large extent the distinguishing
characteristics of the generations that have preceded
us. The positive and negative influences that have
been at work for so many generations have not

172 ESSAY V.

failed to produce their impression. Suppose that
since the days of Queen Elizabeth it had been the
universal custom in England to train women care-
fully in the study of mathematics. Suppose that
such a system had been carried out with extreme regu-
larity and as a thing of course. Is it not almost certain,
that an aptitude for figures and a capacity for sus-
tained reasoning and close thought, would have been a
distinguishing characteristic of modem Englishwomen?
Again, the faculty of intuition, the capacity of seeing
quicker and often further than men, is admitted on
all hands to be one of their natural gifts. Suppose
we had given their intellect fair play for all these
years, instead of teaching them so many triviaUties
Ld Systematically keeping great tUngs from them,
would not the type of the modem Englishwomen have
been far different from what it is? Not only, says
Professor TyndaU, does the woman of the present
day " suffer deflection from intellectual pursuits through
her proper motherly instincts, but inherited prochvities
act upon her mind, like a multiplying galvanometer,
to augment indefinitely the force of the deflection.
Tendency is immanent even in spinsters to warp them
from intellect to baby love.''^'^

In one of the most striking passages ia Mr. Buckle's
"History of Civihzation in England," he tells us
"that the most valuable additions made to legislation
have been enactments destructive of preceding legis-
lation, and the best laws which have been passed
have been those by which some former laws have

THE FUTUBE OF WOMEN. 173

been repealed." ^®^ A similar remark may well be
applied to our paternal government of women. The
time, I trust, is not far distant when our social code
will be remodelled, and some of its more stringent
provisions abrogated altogether. There is room enough
for any good and noble work which women may find
themselves able to accomphsh. We must repeal the
protective duties, legal and social, which we have
estabhshed in favour of ourselves. We must give
women a chance. We must cease to trammel them
in the race of life. We must be content to let their
work and its results speak for themselves.

"A woman cannot do the thing she ought.
Which means whatever perfect thing she can.
In life, in art, in science, but she fears
To let the perfect action take her part
And rest there." (»)

Whatever concessions are obtained by the women
of the future, there seems no good reason for doubting
that the parhamentary franchise will be among the
number. Whatever reasons, either of principle or of
detail, might be urged against other concessions, the
claim of women to the suffrage is one that cannot
be denied on any grounds of justice or expediency.
From the earhest periods of our history to the present
hour, the right to the suffrage has in the main been co-
existent with the ownership or occupation of property.
There has never been any test either of social or intel-
lectual fitness. The right to vote in counties, depending

174 ESSAY V.

as it does to so large an extent upon the ownership of
land worth forty shillings a year, has owing to the
great reduction in the value of money been brought
within the easy reach of the most humble classes
in society. The occupation of any dwelling-house,
however small, within the limits of any parliamentary
borough, confers the franchise upon the occupier.
The owner in the one case, and the occupier in the
other, may be the most ignorant, the most drunken,
the most brutal of men ; but his right to the franchise
is not thereby aflTected in the minutest particular.
He may be coerced into voting by a landlord, or he
may take bribes from a candidate, yet as representation
is the necessary incident of taxation, he has one voice
in the election of his representative in ParUament.
But if a woman occupies a house worth £500 a year,
if she is the owner of half a county, if she is as learned
as Mrs. Somerville, as eloquent as Madame de Stael,
if her household is the envy of her friends, or the
administration of her estate the pride of her neigh-
bours, she is still classed in the same category with
children, paupers, and persons of unsound mind;
she has no voice whatever in the election of her
representative.

The present First Minister has laid it down as
an axiom of politics, that to justify the denial of
the franchise to any person, it is necessary to
allege either personal unfitness or public danger.
If this is true, which of these objections can be alleged
against the women of England, who own property.

THE FUTURE OF WOMEN. 175

who occupy houses, and who pay rates and taxes like
the more favoured half of mankind?

It is urged sometimes, with an appearance of gravity,
that the interests of women will always be sufficiently
represented by the other -sex. Experience, however,
does not seem wholly to have justified this agreeable
view. The existing laws, for instance, with respect
to the property and earnings of a married woman are
a disgrace to an age which boasts of its refinement
and its civilization. It is quite evident that women
will obtain all the sooner whatever additional social
freedom it is right for them to have, when they can
address honourable members in the character of their
constituents. It has been calculated that something
like one-sixth of the houses in boroughs are occupied
either by widows or unmarried women, who, but for
the accident of their sex, would be entitled to the
franchise. Is any practical end secured by divorcing
from its just share of representation one-sixth part of
the occupied houses in our parliamentary boroughs ?

Next to religion, there is no question of human
interest at once so ennobling and so interesting as the
study of politics. There is no subject on which men
of all classes, however shght their abihty or small
their culture, consider themselves so well qualified to
express their opinions. And yet of all subjects this
one of politics is considered the least to accord with
our conventional ideal of woman's mission.

It is quite possible to understand the reasons
which have led to the exclusion of women from many

176 ESSAY V.

walks of life for which they have hitherto shown them-
selves unfitted, but it is wholly impossible to understand
the perversity of the system which gives a woman of
property no direct voice in the election of those who
tax her, which excludes her from doing that which
beyond all doubt she is able to do, and that too at a
time when the systematic admission to the franchise
of all sorts and conditions of men, has made the gulf
thus fixed between the sexes deeper and more un-
meaning than before. There is no adequate reason
based upon pubUc interest or personal fitness for the
reftisal of the sufirage to women. Its concession
could not in the slightest degree interfere with their
general or domestic avocations. It would enlarge
their experiences, possibly their modes of thought.
It would insure a more direct representation of their
special interests, which hitherto have been so constantly
neglected, and it would encourage in them a healthy
and intelhgent interest in national afiairs. Their
exclusion is contrary to political moraKty, because it is
contrary to the most widely recognized principles of
English legislation, and it is supported mainly by the
advocates of the lowest theory of woman's ideal and by
the slaves of the despotism of custom.

It was impossible to regard without some sympathy,
even if with some little amusement, the strenuous
efibrts which the leaders of the movement made to
enfranchise themselves previous to the last general
election. Basing their claims upon what might
have proved a technical error in an Act of Parlia-

THE FUTURE OF WOMEN. 177

ment, they demanded the suffrage upon the ground
that it might possibly have been the object of the
legislature to concede it. Their efforts were not
successful, but they were not thrown away. They
proved that public opinion was strong enough to bring
into unenviable notoriety a revising barrister who not
only rejected their claims with scorn, but imposed upon
one of them an arbitrary, unmannerly, and vexatious
fine ; and they practically secured the right of all the
women in England, properly qualified, to the free
exercise of the municipal franchise. The world has
borne the acquisition by women of this important con-
cession with considerable equanimity. But if the
municipal fi'anchise is conceded, any arguments against
the parhamentary franchise can no longer be entertained.
The right to vote, notwithstanding the recent decision
of the House of Commons, will yet be made with women,
as with men, co-existent with the ownership or occu-
pation of property. If a woman gives up her qualifi-
cation as an occupier and goes to reside in the house
of her husband, her right to vote will cease. If her
quahfication is that of an owner, she will, under new
laws regulating the property of married women, con-
tinue to exercise it as if she were unmarried.

The tradition that female objects, in life are
separate from those of men is rapidly receding
into the antiquity from whence it came. The com-
mon assertion that a polling booth is not a fit
place for a woman, is answered by calling upon
the objector to state the grounds for his asser-

N

178 ESSAY V.

tion. A polling booth has often been, unhappily, a
very unfit place for a man. But the recent Report
of the Select Committee of the House of Commons
on Parliamentary and Municipal Elections, proposes
to aboUsh the only inconvenience to which a female
voter might accidentally be subjected. The Bill intro-
duced by the Marquis of Hartington will probably
become law during the present session, and it is almost
certain that the next general election wiU be conducted
on the principle of secret voting.

Of course it is open to any one to argue that in the
right to vote for a candidate, is also implied the right
to sit for a constituency. But this argument involves
certain cardinal objections. Women at present have
not shown any indication of a wish to sit in Parlia-
ment. It does not seem possible that they could
even maintain a continuous agitation upon such a
subject. If such an agitation were to become possible,
the subject might have to be reconsidered. Certainly
there are persons and classes now sitting in the House
of Commons, or whose admission would be counted an
advantage, against whose claims the pubKc cry was as
vehement at one time as that against the admission of
women would now be. But the physical constitution
of women would break down under the prolonged
exertion of a laborious session, and those who could
undertake the duties of a political life are so few,
and the competition they would meet with so severe,
that the diflBculties in the way of such a course of
life may fairly be considered as insurmountable. So

THE FUTURE OF WOMEN. 179

far, however, as the franchise only is concerned, no
such difficulty exists; the design of our constitution
would be preserved, new ideas, new feelings, new
experiences would be added to our legislative life, and
many important public interests might be permanently
secured.

Among the many anomalies which have resulted
from female subjection, there are none more remarkable
than those which relate to the property and earnings
of married women. Out of nearly three and a half
millions of wives in Great Britain, upwards of eight
hundred thousand are employed in trades or pro-
fessions of various kinds. By the common law of
England a husband is not only practically entitled to
the entire property of his wife, but he has the absolute
right to seize and dispose of whatever earnings she
may acquire during the marriage. The wife has no
legal existence separate from her husband. She can
make no contract; she cannot sue or be sued. Her
existence, to use the quaint expression of Enghsh law,
is ** merged" in that of her husband. So far, indeed,
as the right to her property is concerned, the merger
may take place long previous to her marriage. It is,
perhaps, not generally known that if after the com-
mencement of a treaty for marriage, the intended wife
makes any disposition of her property without the
proposed husband's consent or knowledge, the law will
defeat any such disposition on the ground that the
possession of such property may have been a weighty

180 ESSAY V.

inducement to the proposed husband to enter into the
contract. Consequently, after a treaty for marriage
has been commenced, any disposition so made of the
property of the intended wife is not binding upon her
subsequent husband. It is a refinement of cruelty, that
it makes no difference whether the proposed husband is
aware of the intended wife's fortune or not. A lady
may be possessed of £10,000 in the funds. She may
engage herself to a rich gentleman. She may with-
draw £2,000 of her fortune and settle it upon a
widowed mother or an invahd sister. Her husband
may be in absolute ignorance until his marriage that
she possesses any fortune at all, and yet the law
will set aside the settlement at his instance, on the
ground that the wife's carefiil provision for a mother
or sister is a fraud upon his marital rights. It
is hardly to be wondered at, therefore, that the
present Chancellor of the Exchequer should have in-
dignantly inquired what crime there was in matrimony,
" that the woman who committed it should be visited
with the penalties of high treason, and have all her
property confiscated;" or should have stated that by
the present state of the law " a man without a shilling
might marry a woman of great wealth, and, by
studying the law of cruelty to perfection, might, by a
course of conduct which would be just within the law,
drive his wife and children from him, seize their pro-
perty, and reduce them to misery and destitution,
while he fattened upon the spoils of the unhappy
woman whom he had sworn to love and to cherish. "^^®'

THE FUTUEE OF WOMEN. 181

In cases of intestacy, the gross inequality in the
legal position of the sexes is even more apparent. A
son succeeds to the freehold property of his father, to
the exclusion of a daughter. If the son dies without
children, his younger brother succeeds, and so on till
aU the brothers are extinct, and then, on the ter-
mination of the male line, and not till then, the
daughters are entitled (all jointly, as coparceners) to
the estate of their deceased father.

• The suffering which results from the manner in
which Englishwomen are treated by the law is
both considerable and well known. The wife of a
drunken or profligate husband may carry on a Httle
business, may keep her house and children in clean-
hness and comfort, may even put a little money in
the savings bank. The husband swoops down upon
the house, renders it miserable, takes possession of the
scanty earnings of the wife, draws the money from the
savings bank, and again absents himself from home, to
make another visit when the revived energies of his
unhappy helpmate shall have made it worth his while.
In a vast number of cases where husbands are impro-
vident, everything that a wife can earn is soon
swallowed up, and it is the knowledge that these
earnings are legally the husband's property that is one
of the chief causes of the wretchedness that exists.
It is too often the cause of idleness and drunken-
ness on the part of the husband, for in a bad man it
takes away the natural incentive to labour. It also
removes the wife's motive for exertion; for she

182 ESSAY V.

knows that the earnings which might otherwise be
spent upon her children or her home, may be forcibly
taken from her at any time. It removes that moral
control which a wife with a little money, or the power
of earning it, can easily exercise over an idle or
dissolute husband, and it constantly plunges whole
families into misery and ruin. The protection-orders
issued by magistrates are miserably inadequate to the
necessities of the case. Not only are such orders not
obtainable except in cases of desertion, but they can
be discharged at any time at the discretion of the
magistrate. Even if protection-orders were extended,
the grievance would not be remedied; the order of
protection would in most cases arrive after the earnings
to be protected had disappeared, and it is needless to
dwell upon the well known difficulty of inducing wives
to parade their domestic grievances, or even the danger
they incur in supporting apphcations contrary to the
interest of their husbands.

The upper and middle classes have always striven
to counteract the gross injustice of the Common Law
of England. The general custom of marriage settle-
ments protects them from the misery to which the
lower classes are exposed. The custom by which a
girl's property is settled upon her at her marriage,
not only insures some kind of provision for herself
and her children in the event of the failure or death
of her husband, but undoubtedly in many households
causes her to be treated with additional consideration
and respect. If property is bequeathed to her during

THE FUTURE OP WOMEN. 183

marriage, and this contingency is not provided for
by the settlement, she is still to some extent under
legal protection. The Court of Chancery has mitigated
the severity of the Common Law by an ingenious
contrivance, call a wife's "Equity to a Settlement.'*
If, for instance, a wife receives a legacy of £2,000,
the Court will order half of it to be settled upon
her, to secure her against possible marital improvi-
dence, and will hand over the rest, as an ordinary
matrimonial perquisite, to the husband or his creditors.
And so strong is the leaning, even of the Com-t of
Chancery, in favour of the husband, that in a well
known case where a man had deserted his wife and
was living with another woman, the Court declined
to settle the whole of a sudden windfall of £6,000
upon the injured wife, but gave her only three-fourths
of it, allotting the remaining fourth as the smallest
amount that was equitably payable to the scoundrel
who was her husband.

The supporters of the existing law are never tired
of telhng us that the right of husbands to the property
and earnings of their wives is the consideration due
to them for the various obUgations which they incur
by matrimony. What are these obUgations ? Legally
they are threefold. A husband is responsible for
all the debts of his wife contracted previous to the
marriage; he is bound to provide her with neces-
saries suitable to her condition; and he is solely
hable for the consequences of any criminal action
she may commit in his presence, the law assuming

184 ESSAY V.

that it is done by his command. So far as the
first responsibility is concerned the amoimt of credit
which an unmarried girl, however badly disposed,
is likely to obtain, is so very moderate, and the
instances of her obtaining it so extremely rare, that
the husband's liability on this head is not de-
serving of serious consideration. But he is bound
to maintain her in a manner suitable to her position.
Truly. He is bound to her as much, and no more,
than under the Roman law a master was bound to
do for a slave — he has simply to provide her with
necessaries. If a married woman orders more silk
dresses than a jury may consider necessary for her
position in life, her husband is not bound to pay for
them, she cannot be sued, and the too confiding
tradesman is left out in the cold. The husband's
liability for the wife's criminal acts is also unworthy
of consideration, as whatever liability exists, he must,
from the necessity of the case, have already incurred
on his own account. So that it comes to this, that
for the legal obligation of providing a wife with the
ordinary necessaries of life, a man is entitled to the
whole of her property. A distinguished legal com-
mentator has observed " that the very legal disabilities
to which women are subjected, showed how great
favourites they were in the eye of the law." It is
not very easy to appreciate the ponderous joke which
lies hidden in these words. The inquisitive person
who inquired from the phrenologist what manner of
men those were who possessed at once the organs

THE FUTURE OF WOMEN. 185

of destructiveness and benevolence, received for his
answer — "Those who kill with kindness," The BngUsh
law would seem to be afficted with a phrenological
development of this kind. Female subjection is
obvious enough ; but the kindness that establishes or
perpetuates it is not so easily observed.

Women are asking for a revision of their legal
disabiUties, with a view to their removal. It seems
sufficiently certain that the women of the future will be
emancipated in this respect. We are already on the eve
of important changes. A Bill to protect the property
and earnings of married women, was introduced by
Sir Erskine Perry in 1867, the second reading of
which was carried by 120 votes to 65. The matter
rested till 1868, when Mr. Shaw Lefevre introduced
a similar measure at the instance of the Society for
the Amendment of the Law. The opponents of change
mustered in such force on this occasion, that the
House was equally divided, 123 members voting on
either side. The casting vote of the Speaker was
given in favour of the second reading, and the Bill
was referred to a Select Committee. A measure
similar in principle was introduced last Session by Mr.
Russell Gurney, and after an interesting discussion,
the second reading was carried without a division, and
the third reading by a majority of four to one. Not-
withstanding all this incipient legislation, no practical
result has yet been arrived at. Two measures have
been introduced during the present Session of Parha-
ment, but the amount of pubHc business now before

186 ESSAY V.

the House renders it highly improbable that they will
receive sustained attention.

The measure, which has again been introduced by
Mr. Russell Gumey, has passed the third reading. Its
details are very simple. A married woman is made
capable of holding and dealing with her own property
as if she were unmarried; her earnings become her
own. Her husband ceases to be liable for any debts
contracted by her before marriage, or to be responsible
for any wrong she may commit during marriage. If
the wife makes contracts for the husband, or the
husband for the wife, each is to be considered as surety
for the other. A married woman's separate estate is
to be liable for her own contracts, aud questions arising
between husband and wife relating to property are to
be settled in a cheap and expeditious manner. Sooner
or later the main provisions of this Bill are certain
to become law. Some alterations, however, are indis-
pensable. A wife should have larger powers of
disposition of her freehold or copyhold property. She
should be made directly Kable for the support and main-
tenance of her household. A widow should have no
right to dower or to any interest in her husband's
property until his creditors are paid. In cases of
divorce, a husband ought no longer to be liable for
costs to enable a guilty wife to carry on a suit, unless
the court is Satisfied that she is otherwise unable to do
so. No allowance for subsistence during a pending
suit should be allowed to a wife if the court is satisfied
that she is able to maintain herself without it, and no

THE FUTUKE OF WOMEN. 187

permanent subsistence ought to be granted if a sepa-
ration or divorce is the result of a wife's misconduct.
These, however, are matters of detail. The principles
of the measure may be considered as already adopted
by the legislature. A certain exaggeration in the
manner in which just claims have been urged both by
women and their advocates may be pardoned, as being
a natural reaction on the part of those who have all
their hfe time been subject to bondage ; but now the
course of events obliges us to see that wives do not
obtain important and unjust rights as respects their
husband's property, in addition to the exclusive
guardianship of that which is their own.

Of course there are those who still raise the old
cry, that the change is revolutionary, and will im-
pair the confidence which ought to exist between
husbands and wives. But the confidence which is
founded on injustice tempered by ignorance ought to
be impaired. The reciprocity must cease to be aU on
one side. Women only ask that, with the exception of
a joint Uabihty for the maintenance and education
of children, a husband and wife shall be placed in the
same legal position as a brother and sister keeping
house together. In making this concession we are
only following the example long since set us in Russia,
France, Germany, India, and some of the United States.
The change would " sweeten the breath of EngUsh
society." Women would take as a right the possession
of that which in the upper and middle classes is always
secured to them by cumbrous and unwieldy machinery.

188 ESSAY V.

It would place women on more equal and honourable
terms with men. It would elevate their position and
influence. It would give a stimulus to the industry of
thousands of humble women, and would put a stop at
once and for ever to numberless cases of injustice and
oppression.

When female suffrage has become part of our
EngUsh pohtical system, and 'when tardy justice has
been done to the claims of women to control their own
property and earnings, they will demand, with even
more persistence and earnestness than at present, a
higher intellectual culture, and a wider social hfe. Of
course, these two things are blended intimately to-
gether, but as there are many persons who desire for
women the highest possible education, and at the same
time view with a sort of distrust their admission to
pursuits and occupations hitherto held to be the exclu-
sive province of the other sex, it is desirable to give
each question a separate consideration.

It will, I think, be conceded that for the purposes
of general education, for creating or strengthening
character and intelUgence, or for the purpose of
fitting women to carry on some of those occupations
from which custom now excludes them, they have
an undoubted right to the same access that men have,
to every existing means of intellectual culture. " Let
us fix our minds," says Dr. W. B. Hodgson, "on
the vast utility and the great need of hberal mental
culture for all women, whatever their destiny in life."^"'

THE FUTURE OP WOMEN. 189

I am aware that their claim for a wider social Ufe,
their right to interest themselves in the active occupa-
tions of the world, and to undertake some distinct
occupation or calling as^ a thing of course, is relent-
lessly opposed by those who would grant them the
fullest education, or even the right to the franchise.
And yet such claims would seem to be based upon
considerations which cannot easily be put aside.

It is quite certain that a vast number of women
have a strong desire to earn a livelihood for themselves.
They crave for labour of some kind. Amongst the
lower classes labour is not so much a choice as a
necessity. The workshops and factories of our large
towns are already crowded with women. They have
brothers or sisters or families to support. With them
it is sometimes a choice between free labour and the
workhouse. No one ever denied the right of these
women to work for their daily bread, or doubted the
necessity or the expediency of it. But the moment
we consider the case as applying to the middle or
upper classes, all is changed. If they are not already
provided for, their fathers or husbands work for them.
The necessity for labour does not exist. They lose
caste by attempting it. The unwritten laws of society
are strong against them. The consequence has been
that the only hne of life which has been open for
women above the labour class has been that of tuition.
The market has been terribly overstocked. The
stipend obtainable by the daily labourers in this un-
fruitful vineyard has steadily diminished, while the

190 ESSAY V.

labourers have increased in number ; and we have seen
constant cases of women of education and refinement
accepting, for services of the most important character,
an amount of remuneration which would be scomfiilly
rejected by a butler or a cook.

There are few men, however engrossing their
special occupation may be, who do not impart a variety
and zest to their daily lives, by a constant and active
participation in some of the various human interests
by which they are constantly surrounded.

The man of business, or the professional man,
who is that and nothing more, is generally the
dullest, and often the most miserable of men. But
the man who though maintaining his bread-winning
occupation zealously in the first place, yet takes his
fair share in the wider life of the world, in pohtics,
in science, or the arts, is not only better fitted for the
special labour of his life, but rising superior to the
dulness and insipidity inseparable from a single occu-
pation, lives a life that must contain many elements
of nobleness, and is capable of rendering genuine
service to mankind. Why should women have no
such opportunities afforded them? Why should they
be shut out from these actual and reflected advantages ?
We are perpetually teaching them that they must
properly qualify themselves to be wives and mothers,
forgetting that many of them may never be wives
and mothers at all ; forgetting that if their education
is addressed to that aim only, and to no other, it will
constantly fail in attaining it; forgetting that the

THE FUTURE OP WOMEN. 191

standard of obligation which we set up tends to vitiate
their lives and destroy their power of useftdness;-
forgetting that we are encouraging "the righteous
discontent of souls which are meant to sit at the
Father's table, and cannot content themselves with
the husks which the swine did eat."^^^* Who is there
who does not nimiber amongst his acquaintance many
women brought up in accordance with the straitest
sect of modem orthodoxy, with capacities which have
never been developed, with hopes which have never been
realized, who have duly qualified themselves for the pro-
fession of finding husbands in accordance with the
estabhshed rules, but who have found out too late that
their sole qualification for existence has not availed
them anything, and that their lives have been rendered
vacant and unhappy. What thoughts come home to
the regulation matron of the nineteenth century, when
she hears the mournful notes of the "sweet bells
jangled, out of tune, and harsh." What answer has
she ready for her daughters, who come to her with
the ,fi:uits of their misdirected youth — firuits not of
the tree of knowledge, still less of the tree of life, but
dead sea apples already turned to ashes, and typical
of a fixture without resources and without hope.

Admitting, as we must admit, that numbers of
women capable of rendering excellent service to
humanity, are pining for usefiil and active occupation ;
admitting that many do not marry or have no famihes,
or if they have, are yet insufficiently occupied — surely
it is worth considering if there are no means of use-

192 ESSAY V.

fulness which could be afforded them without injuring
any of their distinctive characteristics which are really
worth preserving.

It is said of one of the most able and successful
of female artists, that "she had no patience with
women who asked permission to think," and that
she urged them to establish their claims, not by
conventions with men, but by the performance of
great and good works of their own. She was a priestess
of her own faith — she made no conventions, but she
knew what she had to do and did it, and set at rest for
ever the question of whether women are capable, in
certain high walks of art, of competing with men on
equal terms.

Women ought freely to be allowed to do whatever
they can show themselves capable of doing. Nothing
succeeds like success. They have a right to whatever
place in the social order they can win for them-
selves. It may not be in accordance with the Quarterly
Review theory of woman's mission, that they should
write more books; but some of the most striking
and original contributions to modern English literature
have been made by women. The world will remember
the vigorous and original pages of Jane Eyre^ though
the hand that penned them was that of a frail lady,
in a solitary parsonage on a northern moor. The
subtle insight and powerful delineation of character
which distinguish the authoress of The 'Spanish Gipsy
and Adam, Bede are sensible and permanent additions
to the literary wealth of the English people. Some

THE FUTUEE OF WOMEN. 193

may think it unfeminine for women to become painters,
but Rosa Bonheur can compete with Sir Edwin Landseer
in one branch of art, and in another Miss Mutrie has
probably no Uving superior. There are many persons
who think violin-playing an unwomanly accompUsh-
ment, but no one can hear Norman Neruda's perform-
ance of the masterpieces of Haydn or Mozart without
being led to the irresistible conclusion that no instru-
ment is more fitting or more graceful to a woman than
a violin. A few years ago the idea of a Protestant lady
becoming a hospital nurse would have been treated
with scornful incredulity. Now one of the few happy
reminiscences that survive to us of the Crimean cam-
paign is that of the delicate woman who ministered in
the hospitals at Scutari, and whose influence has been
such in this country that the whole system of hospital
nursing is being rapidly remodeUed. It was not con-
ceivable at one . time that an EngUshwoman should
ever be a physician, but now London has the benefit
of the services of at least one well-trained and
accomplished doctress, of whom many of the most
eminent metropolitan physicians are constantly speak-
ing with admiration and regard.

It may be an open question whether the power of
earning is or is not essential to the real dignity and
happiness of a woman ; but at least it is certain that
she has a social right to exercise such power if
necessary; and it is equally true that women have
proved themselves capable of doing most things
for which they have been hitherto believed to be im-

194 ESSAY V.

fitted. A real superiority will show itself, however
difficult may be the circumstances in which it is placed.
" Against the power of genuine ability class jealousy
is impotent.**.

I do not say that all women of the middle classes
should be brought up to trades or professions; numbers
of them would have neither the capacity nor the incli-
nation for such modes of life. There are some em-
iJloyments in which women only are engaged ; there are
others in which both sexes already compete on equal
terms. I venture to assert that it is contrary to
public interests that women should be forcibly ex-
cluded from any kind of occupation. If they have
special faculties in any particular direction, such
faculties should be allowed a reasonable scope for ex-
pansion. It is useless to attempt to crush the longings
that women are developing for more interesting and
useful lives. If such longings are not ephemeral, parents
will do well to insure for their daughters some definite
and suitable occupation. It is not possible to over-
estimate the advantages which would result from men
in trades and professions allowing their daughters
some participation in the work of their daily lives.
What girls want is a larger observation of the world,
and a deeper knowledge of human nature. It is a
lamentable fact that there are numbers of women so
ignorant of the commonest details of business, that
they do not understand the meaning of giving a
receipt on account. No story is more common than
that of a woman, who has some property, and has

THE FUTURE OF WOMEN. 195

noble and generous impulses, who will calmly sacrifice
all her prospects in life for the benefit of a worthless
brother. He has deceived her once, perhaps twice,
but she still believes in him, and, unless restrained by
some judicious and unimpressionable adviser, she
deprives herself of the capacity of permanently as-
sisting him by placing the whole of her capital in his
reckless hands. Such noble and generous impulses
are fortunately not rare ; but it is only by proper
training that method can be given to the madness of
female generosity.

There are few^ of our merchants and manufacturers
and professional men who could not largely avail them-
selves of the services of their educated and competent
daughters; and if such services could be rendered
generally available, it is not too much to say that a
wider and more fertile social life would arise for man-
kind. Men's occupations would in no sense be pre-
judiced, whilst women would at once find that outlet
for their faculties for which many of them have been
so long striving. A certain responsibiUty would
increase their self-reliance. A capacity for earning
would remove their sense of dependence; a definite
occupation would bring both health and cheerfulness ;
and the larger experiences of Ufe would give force and
completeness to their mental character.

Nor would women be deprived of the power of
acquiring those peculiar accomplishments which befit
their sex. It is possible that girls with no taste for
music would cease to spend years of toil in learning

196 ESSAY V,

the art of performing very badly pieces of music which
no one wishes to hear; and that those with no taste
for drawing would no longer be obliged to make an
indefinite number of bad copies of doubtfiil works
of art. Most accompUshments are acquired in the
intervals of severer studies.

The advantages accruing to men would scarcely
be less important. Young wives would have acquired
something more than the specific knowledge which
they think enables them to manage a household with
efficiency ; women would be able for the first time to
take a genuine interest in the objects and pursuits
of men, and would become more and more their
companions and Mends.

In cases where women exhibit a strong interest
in a particular occupation and a determination to
continue in it, parents should afford them an oppor-
tunity of doing so. The necessary capital would rarely
be thrown away. It would not be expended until
the desire for the occupation became so strong, that
an investment for such a purpose would be a legitimate
speculation. If the woman should marry it might
not be necessary for her altogether to give up her
occupation. It might even provide her with the means
of rendering a marriage possible, which otherwise
would be too imprudent to be entertained. At the
worst, it would only be an insurance against the risk of
helplessness — a suitable provision in case of need.

It is interesting to watch the manner in which
some men have treated the efforts of women to help

THE FUTURE OF WOMEN. 197

themselves. The only English lady who is at present
a member of the medical profession, qualified herself
for the occupation of her choice with a perseverance
and energy which cannot be to highly praised. She
was permitted to attend the ordinary classes of many
professors. In those cases where mixed classes were
not permitted, teachers were kind enough to repeat
their lectures to her privately. Almost all the avenues
by which the profession is attained were closed to
her, but finding one portal accidentally open, she
passed through it, and then the janitors, horrified at the
unexpected intrusion, double locked the gate behind
her, and, according to present intentions, no other
woman is to be allowed to enter.

It has long been thought, even by the advocates
of female subjection, that women's claims to minister
to suffering humanity might be allowed to pass without
challenge. But the case is altogether changed if an
educated woman attempts to make a living out of
her occupation, and medical men stand aghast at so
dangerous an innovation. Yet there is nothing
modem or whimsical in the desire of women to be
trained in the art of heaKng. The medical college at
Zurich has long been open to them. The University
of Paris now grants medical degrees. In Russia
ladies are admitted to practise as physicians. The
University of Edinburgh recently adopted some wise
regulations for the medical education of women. By
a minute of the University Court female students
were made subject to all the University regulations.

198 ESSAY V.

'* as to the matriculation of students, their attend-
ances in classes, examination, or otherwise/'

Out of 232 students in one class who received the
same instruction, 226 were men and six were women.
Thirty-seven (including five out of the six women
students) obtained honours. One of the ladies earned
a Scholarship. But the wise men of the north, in a
burst of angry jealousy, have refused her the just
reward of her labours.

The female students, though taught at a separate
hour, received exactly the same tickets of admission,
heard the same lectures, and passed the same examin-
ation under identical conditions. The lady in question
was awarded one of the medals which were due to the
five highest students of the session, and her position as
a member of the University was thus fiilly admitted ;
but with a perversity as inconsistent as it was unjust,
she was refiised the Scholarship, and thereby was
debarred fi'om the fi^ee right to pursue her studies in
that branch of science in which she had already proved
herself fitted to succeed.

Some time ago women were eligible for election
as Associates by the Royal Academy. A certain
interest in art has always been held consistent with
the modem theories of their rights and duties. But
when they began to distinguish themselves, and to
show their capacity for meeting men on equal terms,
with a narrowness of vision of which artists ought to
have been ashamed the Academy was closed against
them, and although they may still exhibit, they cannot

THE FUTURE OF WOMEN. 199

become Associates, and every difficulty is placed in
the way of those who are anxious to avail themselves
of the education of its schools.

Such acts of discourtesy and unfairness are im-
fortunately only too common. What is the use of
treating women with an apparent deference and a
superficial poHteness, if we are \mwilling to concede
them those things which would so greatly elevate
them, and on the possession of which so many of them
have set their hearts. "We have had enough,'* says
Mr. Mill, **of the morahty of submission, of the
morality of chivalry and generosity; the time is now
come for the morahty of justice. If we rob a woman
of the ground on which she ought to stand, it signifies
little with what grimaces of gallantry we ofier her
a chair."

Whatever views may prevail with regard to any
of the subjects which I have been considering, there
is no possible reason against women being provided
with the widest intellectual culture, which it may be
possible fol* them to obtain. Knowledge must be
cultivated for its own sake, regardless of the uses to
which it may be applied. The ideal of the education
of a boy is that his faculties, mental and physical,
should be developed ; that he should be taught to
think; that he should learn, by the acquisition of as
much general knowledge as may be possible, the art
of maintaining himself in whatever niche in the great
social fabric he may be ultimately called upon to fill.

200 ESSAY V.

But the duties which he learns are general, not special ;
his early training is not for a specific trade or profession,
but for humanity ; and it is only when he is approaching
manhood that his acquired or developed faculties are
devoted to the pecuHar necessities of his individual
hfe. With women the case is ahnost reversed. The
miserable smattering of ineflEective knowledge which
makes up what is called their education, is always
directed to the supposed individual necessities of their
existence. It is neither good enough, nor deep enough,
nor comprehensive enough.

" Boys are educated for the world,*' says Mr. Bryce
in his report to the Schools Inquiry Commission,
"girls only for the drawing room." The schools
in which the bulk of the yoimg women of England
are educated are not only greatly inferior to those
devoted to boys, but they are not good enough
even for the low standards which they aspire to
attain. The attempt to construct an education by
throwing together a few crude facts, to build educa-
tional walls with inferior bricks and without mortar,
is common enough ; but with rare exceptions schools
which aim at a thorough mental training, at the forma-
tion of intellectual habits and tastes, are conspicuous
by their absence. " Education cannot be said to have
failed in creating such tastes and habits because it has
never tried to do so," says Mr. Bryce, who affirms that
it is not the wish of the parents to foster such habits,
and therefore it is no wonder that it should not be
the object of the schools. " Although," he adds, " the

THE FUTURE OF WOMEN. 201

world has now been in existence several thousand
years, the notion that women have minds as cultivatable
and as well worth cultivating as men's minds is still
regarded by the ordinary British parent as an offensive,
not to say a revolutionary, paradox.'*

The consequence has been that girls' schools have
been regarded rather as places of moral training than
of intellectual culture, and after recent investigation it
must unhappily be taken for granted that the state of
middle-class female education in England is such as
to excite the gravest apprehension.

" Want of thoroughness and foundation, want of
system, slovenliness and showy superficiaUty, inatten-
tion to rudiments, undue time given to accompUshments,
and those not taught intelligently or in any scientific
manner." These are some of the charges brought by
the Schools Inquiry Commission against modem female
education, and with which those who are anxious about
the fiiture of women are now called upon to deal.

Experience is sufficient, I think, to convince us
that the capacity of girls for intellectual attainments
is similar in kind to that of boys, whatever may be
the difference in degree, and inquirers of undoubted
eminence have reported that in mixed schools taught
by masters they have found no noticeable difference
of attainments in the two sexes.

In the matter of education, women have again
been left in the lurch. It is a remarkable fact that
although from Berwick-upon-Tweed to* Land's End,
England bristles with educational endowments, only

202 ESSAY y.

a very scanty portion of these ample funds is ever
devoted to the education of girls. Whether they were
intentionally excluded by founders from participating
in the benefits conferred, or whether, as no mention
was often made of them, founders did' not contemplate
the possibiUty of their equal educational rights being
questioned, would not now be profitable to inquire.

There is, however, one gigantic endowment, "a
splendid reUc of mediaeval munificence," Christ's
Hospital, concerning the intentions of whose founders
there is no doubt. It has been always admitted that
girls have a right as well as boys to share in the
advantages of this noble foundation. The right has
always been conceded by the authorities. The in-
come of this great charity is nearly £60,000 a year ;
twelve hundred boys enjoy the blessings of education
under its auspices, and less than twenty girls!

Is it just, or desirable, or consistent with the
public welfare, that the endowments for the higher
education of women should, either by design or by
perversity, continue to bear an infinitesimal proportion
to the similar endowments for boys? It is of no
slight moment that the Commissioners have reported
in favour of the principle of the full participation of
girls in all educational endowments ; and it is a matter
of notoriety that many endowed schools, and among
others that of King Edward VI, in Birmingham, are
already proposing to make arrangements for carrying
the recommendations of the Commissioners into
practical effect.

THE FUTURE OF WOMEN. 203

Next in order to a sound school education conies
the means by which that education may receive the
necessary stimulus and encouragement. In 1863 the
University of Cambridge extended its system of local
examinations to girls below the age of eighteen. At
first a trial examination took place with the same
papers which had been used for boys, and the result
was so satisfactory that shortly afterwards male and
female candidates were admitted to the same ex-
aminations. The report of the Syndicate for 1867
was of a very remarkable character. It showed that
the work sent up by the girls was not only done well,
but that in many respects the girls were superior to
the boys. " The bold step," says the report of the
Commission, " of admitting girls to the very same
examinations as boys was , clearly justified on the part
of its most enlightened advocates, by the fact that
the subjects dealt with were the fundamental ones
of general knowledge.'* The Universities of Oxford
and London have followed the excellent example
set by the University of Cambridge ; and a stimulus is
now being given of the most efficient and beneficial
character to the general education of yoiing women
in England.

But assuming that the girls of the future secure
the right of participating in educational endowments ;
assuming an enormous improvement in private schools ;
assuming that the examinations oflTered by the various
Universities insure girls' work being brought into the
light; and assuming that the necessary stimulus is

204 ESSAY V.

given to their studies, of which they so greatly stand
in need ; is it desirable that no ftirther r^ular oppor-
tunity for study should be afforded them; that their
education should be supposed to be completed at the
age of eighteen ? Is it not consistent with an enlarged
idea of women's mission that they should be allowed to
carry on their studies, when they have left those
establishments which are called, with a terrible irony,
"finishing schools?"

The most eminent of the Assistant Commissioners
have reported in favour of an extended system of
education. The views of competent inquirers tend
in the du-ection of the ^stabUshment, particularly in
large towns, of central schools, with lecture halls and
libraries, in which collective instruction should be
given on certain subjects, and the proficiency of pupils
tested from time to time. Many persons interested
in the improvement of the higher education of women
have earnestly supported the establishment of the new
Ladies' College at Hitchin, a college " designed to
hold in relation to girls' schools, and home teaching,
a position analogous to that occupied by the Uni-
versities towards the private schools for boys." It is
needless to add that the proposition was met
in many quarters with iU-deserved ridicule; with
stock quotations from Mr. Tennyson's Princess; and
with that want of consideration with which, on such
subjects, custom has made us familiar. But the idea
gathered force as the details of the scheme came to
be fairly considered. It was supported by persons

THE FUTURE OF WOMEN. 205

of both sexes, whose responsible position, and accurate
knowledge of the educational necessities of the times,
formed the best guarantee of the value of their
opinions.

The Commissioners have expressed their cordial
approval of the object that has been proposed. A
suitable site for building a college has been obtained ;
considerable, although at present totally inadequate,
funds have been subscribed ; and a temporary arrange-
ment has been made by which a limited number of
students commenced their college career in the autumn
of the past year. The course of instruction extends
over three years. About half the year is to be spent
in residence ; and ladies, who from various causes may
be unable to take the whole course, will be received
for shorter periods.

The leaders in this movement are entitled to our
heartiest sympathy, and to our best wishes for the
success of a scheme fraught with so many possible
advantages to the future of Englishwomen. Its
success can only be a question of time. It may be
long in coming. It is impossible to sound the depths
of the apathy which exists in so many persons with
regard to the education of their female children.
It is impossible to predict how soon parents may be
acted upon for good by the gradual improvement of
society. At present the Commissioners say, "We
hear that parents look chiefly for immediate results;
that they will not pay for good teaching when they
might have it; that they oppose that which is not

206 BSSAT y.

Bhowy and attractive; that they are themselves the
cause of deterioration in competent teachers; that
their own want of cultivation hinders it in their
children." But whether it succeeds or not, the eflTorts
of its promoters are entitled to respect and consider-
ation; immense advantages will result from the free
discussion of the subjects of which it is the symbol,
and the genial enthusiasm of Miss Emily Davies,
on behalf of the great object of her life, no less than
her capacity for directing it to certain and definite
ends, will infaUibly meet with its well-merited reward.

I have thus endeavoured to indicate the more im-
portant points on which a change is likely to be
eflTected in the prevailing ideas, of the position, the
employment, and the education of women. I do not
advocate the slightest interference with the natural
distinctions of sex.

In claiming the franchise for women, I ask only
that sex shall not disqualify them from the exercise of
the ordinary rights which accompany the ownership or
the occupation of property. In claiming a wider social
life for them, I do so believing **that to be utterly
devoid of interest in great transactions or ideas, is to
keep a house swept and garnished for as many unclean
spirits as choose to come in."^^^^ In urging that they
should be admitted to some slight share in the pro-
fessional or commercial life of the world, I am urging
only that they should be more fully occupied, that they

THE FUTURE OF WOMEN. 207

should be less dependent, that they should be able to
take a deeper and more abiding interest in the daily
Uves of men. I am urging that the true measure of
their right to knowledge is their capacity to receive it ;
that the true criterion of their right to laboiu* is their
power to succeed.

I would respect all characteristic differences between
the sexes, but such differences should be ascertained
by careful induction, and not be founded upon the
hasty generalizations of ignorance or conceit. I would
maintain everything that is noble in the womanly
character, convinced that the enlargement of pursuit
and occupation would involve no depreciation of the
womanly type. I would hold up female grace and
beauty as of yore to the admiration of mankind, but
would urge that it is time the heavenly Aphrodite
ceased to be represented as standing upon a tortoise.

I do not attempt to justify the outrageous claims
for an absolute uniformity with men which some women
have not hesitated to urge. If such claims are rights,
they involve their corresponding obUgations : the
captain of no future Birkenhead need keep clear the
boats for women's safety, nor brave men be bound
on their behalf to go down silently to death.

I do not attempt to palliate the preposterous
assertions we sometimes hear, that various occupations
ought legally to be closed to men in order to enforce a
wider field for woman's labour. These are the state-
ments that sometimes almost justify the appellation of
* ' the shrieking sisterhood. " "I have little patience with

208 ESSAY V.

the freaks of feminine eccentricity wldch bring down
the ridicule of the undeserving upon a sacred cause."
I urge, however, that we should keep an open
mind upon these questions, that we should be superior
to deep-rooted prejudices on the one hand, even if on
the other we should often turn a deaf ear to the
incessant jangling of female chains. But we cannot
reap where we have not sown. We must give women
the legal, social, and educational advantages which
we have hitherto kept from them, and leave tliem to
make what mark they can upon the life and history
of the time. We must remove from their path
whatever obstacles impede their true progress to
Hght and knowledge.

"All mast be false that thwarts this one great end,
And all of Gtod, that bless mankind or mend."

CHARLES EDWARD MATHEWS.

THE FUTUEE OF WOMEN. 209

NOTES.

<i) Pall Mall Gazette, July 2, 1868.

<2^ The Subjection of Women. J. S. Mill. 2nd edit., p. 1.

<3) History of European Morals. Lecky. 2nd edit., vol. II, p. 304.

(4) Elizabeth Smith. 1811.

<5> Quarterly Eeview, April, 1869. Female Education.

(6) Woman's Work and Woman's Culture. Essay Y.

(^ Odds and Ends of Alpine Life. Macmillan's Magazine, 1869.

<8) Buckle's History of Civilization in England. 4th edit., vol. I, p. 253.

•J^) E. B. Browning's Aurora Leigh. 4th edit., p. 353.

<!<» Speech on Married Women's Property Bill, June 10, 1868.

ill) Education of Girls, p. 34, by W. B. Hodgson.

<12) Adela Cathcart, by George Macdonald.

(13) Saturday Review, 3rd March, 1866.

The number of English women who, from choice or necessity,
remain single is very large. Not only so, but at the time of the Census
of 1861, there were living in England and Wales upwards of half a
million more females than males. Of all married women in certain
parts of Western Europe, including these Islands, one out of every eight
is not troubled with maternal cares.

ESSAY VI.

EUTHANASIA.

ONE of the very greatest practical benefits which,
science has hitherto conferred on mankind, is the
discovery of the uses of chloroform as an anassthetic.
This wiU be pretty generally admitted at the present
time. Still, it should not be forgotten that, on the
first application of chloroform — and more especially
on its earlier application to cases of childbirth — there
were not wanting voices raised in warning against the
innovation; men not much unwiser on the average than
their fellows saw, in such attempts to escape from pain,
evidence of impatience with the ways of Providence
and symptoms of revolt against the decree "In sorrow
shalt thou bring forth ; " what they saw, or thought
they saw, they proclaimed aloud, and were not sparing
in their prophecies of evil to come on those who prac-
tised, and those who submitted to, the innovation they
denounced.

EUTHANASIA. 211

Objections of this kind, however, quickly gave way
before the clear, indisputable benefits secured by the
new discovery ; and now we hear no further protests
raised against the administration of chloroform wherever
violent and temporary suffering has to be dealt with,
whether that suffering proceed from childbirth or be
threatened by the surgeon's knife.

The words "temporary suffering" are used advisedly;
for if it were proposed to have recourse to chloroform
in all cases of diflBcult and painful death as well as of
difficult birth, the proposal would, most likely, be
scouted as too outrageous to merit serious discussion ;
yet it may well be doubted, if objections to such an
application of anaesthetics are one whit better founded
than were those earlier protests against their introduc-
tion : and it is difficult to understand why chloroform
should rightly be recurred to, to render less painful
the naturally painful passage into life ; and yet, that it
should be almost an offence to so much as suggest a
like recurrence to it, in the still more painful passage
out of Ufe. Why, it may be asked, why, in every case
of emergency, should the inhaler be at hand, when a
human being is to be born into the world; and yet,
never be turned to, to stifle the agony so often suf-
fered in cases of protracted dying? Why should it
not be as simple a matter of course that the medical
attendant should bring reUef to this last worst pang
that poor human nature has to undergo, as it is that
he should aUay the pains of childbirth, or subdue, by
chloroform, or narcotics, the temporary paroxysms of

212 ESSAY VI.

a violent and dangerous illness ? Why should the
patient about to be operated on by the surgeon always
have a refuge from conscious suffering open to him ;
and yet the patient about to suffer at the hands
of nature the worst she has to inflict — and her re-
sources in this line are terribly great — be left without
help or hope of help? Why, in short, should the
inhaler not be seen as unfailingly by the bed of death,
as it is by the operating table?

A much less extensive application than this,
however, of chloroform as an ansBsthetic, is all that is
advocated here ; the main object of the present essay
being merely to establish the reasonableness of the
following proposal : That in all cases of hopeless and
painful illnesSf it should be the recognized duty of the
medical attendant, whenever so desired by the patient^ to
administer chloroform — or such other ancesthetic as may
by-and-by supersede chloroform — so as to destroy con-
sciousness at oncSy and put the sufferer to a quick and
painless death; all needful precautions being adopted to
prevent any possible abuse of such duty; and msans being
taken to establish, beyond the possibility of doubt or
question, that the remedy was applied at the express wish
of the patient.

How great the boon conferred on mankind would
be, were such a rule as the above generally recognized
and acted on, those best can tell whose sorrowful lot
it has been to stand by in helpless misery, while one
near to them was being done to death by the hideous
tortures of a lingering disease ; who have had to

EUTHANASIA. 213

watch, and feebly minister to, throughout long months,
a suffering parent, brother, sister, or child ; the patient,
all this weary while, getting no respite from fierce pain,
except in the brief intervals of feverish broken sleep :
who have had to witness all this, with the full know-
ledge that recovery was impossible; with the knowledge,
too, that the patient knew his fate as well as the
watcher did: knew that there was no hope of reUef
but in death, and that death was to be reached only
by the gradual exhaustion of the bodily strength ; with
the knowledge, too, that the last living moments would
probably be the hardest to bear of aU, and might
possibly culminate in almost unimaginable horror.

Cases such as this abound on every hand; and
those who have had to witness suffering of this kind,
and to stand helplessly by, longing to minister to the
beloved one, yet unable to bring any real respite or
relief, may well be impatient with the easygoing spirit
that sees in all this misery — so long as it does not fall
upon itself, nothing but "the appointed lot of man; "
and that opposes, as almost impious or profane, every
attempt to deal with it effectually.

Why, it must be asked again, should all this unne-
cessary suffering be endured ? The patient desires to
die ; his Hfe can no longer be of use to others, and has
become an intolerable burden to himself; the patient's
Mends submit- to the inevitable, but seek the means of
robbing death of its bitterest sting — protracted bodily
pain : the medical attendant is at the bedside, with all
the resources of his knowledge and his skill ready to

214 ESSAY VI.

his hand : he could, were he permitted, bring to his
patient immediate and permanent relief. Why is he
not allowed to do so ? or rather, why should not his
doing so be a recognized and sovereign duty?

When this question is seriously asked, the answers
to it are very unsatisfactory; such answers for the
most part consisting in a series of commonplaces about
" the sacredness of life ;" the " folly" and "cowardice"
of suicide, direct or indirect ; the duty of " submission
to the will of God," and of " not quitting one's post,
except at the bidding of one's commander." Common-
places such as these — interlarded occasionally with
other commonplaces about the hallowing influences of
the sick room, and the beneficent action on the heart
of faithful ministration, throughout long and trying
illness, to those sick unto death — are all one has to
listen to ; and these commonplaces have, doubtless, a
certain kind of truth in them ; but, like most common-
places introduced into a discussion, have Uttle, if any,
bearing on the subject they are meant to support.

As for the "sacredness of Hfe," for instance, it
may well be doubted if life have any sacredness about
it, apart from the use to be made of it by its possessor.
Nature certainly knows nothing of any such sacred-
ness, for there is nothing of which she is so prodigal ;
and a man's life, in her eyes, is of no more value than
a bird's. And hitherto, man has shown as little sense
of the value of man's life as nature herself, whenever
his passions or lusts or interests have been thwarted
by his brother man, or have seemed likely to be for-

EUTHANASIA. 215

warded by his brother man's destruction. A sense of
the value of his own individual life to himself, man
has, indeed, seldom been deficient in ; and, by a kind
of reflex action, this sense has slowly given birth to,
and always imderUes, the sense, such as it is, of the
value of other men's lives. But even to-day, and amid
the most civiHzed countries of Europe, "the sacred-
ness of man's life" is thrown to the winds, the moment
national or political passion grows hot, or even when
mere material interests are seriously threatened. And,
indeed, seeing that Ufe is so transitory a thing, and
that, at the best, it has to be laid aside for ever, within
the brief space of its threescore years and ten, it is
hard to understand the meaning of the word " sacred "
when apphed to it, except in so far as the word may
signify the duty laid on each man of using his hfe
nobly while he has it. Or, in another sense, life may
be called sacred, as property is called sacred ; meaning
by the phrase, that its possessor is not to be disturbed
in his possession even by the state, except for weighty
cause ; and for no cause whatever, except that of self-
defence, by any individual member of the state. But
it is useless to invoke any such sacredness as is implied
in either of these meanings of the word, in bar of the
proposal advocated in this essay ; there is no question
here of making a noble use of life, for, by the suppo-
sition, all the uses of hfe are over, and nothing remains
to its possessor but to bear its pains; and again, as
there can be no violation of the sacredness of property
when it is laid aside with the owner's consent, so

216 ESSAY VI.

there can be no violation of the sacredness of life,
in this sense of the word, when, with the consent of
the sufferer, a life is taken away that has ceased
to be useful to others, and has become an unbearable
infliction to its possessor.

It is curious, too, to observe how readily the prin-
ciple of life's sacredness can be set aside by men who
appeal to that same principle, unhesitatingly, whenever
it is proposed to step a little farther than they, in a
track they themselves are following. The very medical
attendant who would revolt from the bare idea of
putting a hopelessly suffering patient to death out-
right, though the patient implored him to do so,
would feel no scruple in giving temporary relief by
opiates, or other anaesthetics, even though he were
absolutely sure that he was shortening the patient's
life by their use. Suppose, for instance, that a given
patient were certain to drag on through a whole
month of hideous suffering, if left to himself and
nature, but that the intensity of his sufferings could
be allayed by drugs, which, nevertheless, would hasten
the known inevitable end by a week : — There are few,
if any, medical men who would hesitate to give the
drugs; few, if any, patients, or patients' relations or
friends, who would hesitate to ask that they should
be given. And if this be so, what becomes of the
sacredness of life ? The dying man had, by the sup-
position, a month more of life in him; his medical
attendant knowingly and deliberately deprives him of
a week of that month, he and his consenting to the

EUTHANASIA. 217

deprivation : what was there in this one week of
the dying man's remnant of life less sacred than in the
other three weeks of it ? Is it not clear that if you
once break in upon hfe's sacredness, if you curtail its
duration by never so little, the same reasoning that
justifies a minute's shortening of it, will justify an
hour's, a day's, a week's, a month's, a year's; and
that all subsequent appeal to the inviolability of life
is vain? You have already violated it, and rightly
violated it; and the same reasoning which justifies
what you have already done, will justify further
violation.

The objection, then, based on the sacredness of
life may be dismissed; Ufe is a thing for use, and is
to be used freely and sacrificed freely, whenever good
is to be won or evil avoided by such sacrifice or
use; the man who is ever ready to face death for
others' sakes, to save others from grinding pain, has
always been reckoned a hero; and what is heroic if
done for another is surely permissible, at least, if done
for oneself; the man who could voluntarily give up
his hfe to save another from months of slow torture,
would win everybody's good word: why should he
be debarred from taking a Uke step when the person
to be rescued is himself?

The only question to be put in a case like this is,
is the motive weighty enough to justify the sacrifice ?
for it is certain that hfe ought not to be sacrificed
lightly, whether that life be another's or one's own.
It would seem that the motive supposed is weighty

218 ESSAY YI.

enough : for there are few duties — indeed, it is difficult
to imagine there are any — higher than that of dimin-
ishing, to the utmost of one's power, the aggregate of
human — and, it may be added, of animal — suflfering ;
and though pain should be bravely borne whenever
bearing it promises, directly or indirectly, to destroy
greater pain, there can be no possible call on any
man to suffer for mere suffering's sake.

Nor will the appeal to ** submission to the will of
Providence" bear examination better than the "sacred-
ness of life;" for this submission, frequent as it is on
men's Hps, is never practised in their lives so long
as they can possibly avert or avoid occasion for it.
When things are inevitable, we must needs submit;
and having to submit, we had better submit with as
good a grace as we can summon to our aid. Apart
from this interpretation, the phrase "submission to
God's will " has no meaning for us. Not submission to
surroundiDLg circumstances — another term for " God's
will" — but successful eflTort to bend them to his pur-
poses, is man's chief business here ; and every useful
thing he does is a successful attempt to change, for
his own or others' benefit, some of the conditions of
life which surround him : and his whole existence, so
far as it is not blindly passive, consists in a series of
such attempts ; consists, if the phrase quoted have any
real meaning, in systematic opposition to the will of
God. But reaUy the phrase has no meaning beyond
expressing the duty of bearing uncomplainingly what-
ever has necessarily to be borne; and in this sense

EUTHANASIA. . 219

the precept to submit is admirable enough. It has
been well said : — " The main business of every son of
Adam is first to learn how to live and then to learn
how to die." The whole duty of man is epitomized in
that one sentence : and this duty consists — to borrow
from the Founder of Positivism — in noble endeavour
to remedy whatever is susceptible of remedy, and in
noble resignation to the irremediable. Now, suffering
is, happily, often remediable; there is nothing quite
inevitable but death ; the fatally stricken sufferer who
summons the discovery of the chemist to his aid,

"Consents to death but conquers agony"

in a serener fashion than the poet's hero : he submits
to the wiU of God in that he dies without repining
or complaint; he resigns himself to the inevitable;
but he does not submit to fruitless suffering which
he can remedy; and in such non-submission he is
only carrying out the principle that has lain at the
heart of every usefal act of his life; that of strug-
gUng to the uttermost to remedy whatever lies within
reach of remedy.

But this doctrine would justify suicide in other
extremities besides those of helpless physical pain ?
Yes, in other extremities ; but there are suicides and
suicides, be it remembered ; and no estimate of the
act sufficiently wide to include all cases has ever yet
been framed in words ; while any estimate less wide than
this cannot possibly be just. It is no part of this essay,
however, to defend the taking away of one's own life.

220 ESSAT VI.

except under like conditions to those which justify — as
is here maintained — one's medical attendant in taking
it for one; but whenever a man is stricken with a
fatal and painful disease, he is surely right — unless
confident in his own power to bear and conquer
extremest pain — in taking advantage of the pallia-
tives won for him by man's genius, and in laying
down calmly, dehberately, and painlessly, a life which,
but for such palliatives, would have to be passed in
weary suffering, and closed perhaps in agony. Those
who feel sure of themselves even before torment such
as this, may be right in acting on their trust; but
even then, when recovery is absolutely hopeless, and
the suffering likely to be protracted as well as
severe, it is questionable if it be not a man's duty
to consider others' feehngs, and to weigh others'
endurance as well as his own ; and to bethink himself
whether he ought to condemn those nearest him to
witness sufferings which they would find it almost as
easy to bear themselves as to see another bear. To
some organizations there is hardly anything so insup-
portable as the sight of hopeless pain ; and this fact,
too, should be weighed in the balance when the final
resolution has to be taken, of dying at once and
painlessly, or dying months hence, worn out with
bodily torture.

But of other suicide than this no defence is offered
here; all that is suggested is, that those who seize

"Our privilege, what beast has heart to do it?"

EUTHANASIA. 221

may possibly plead more in their own behalf than
popular sentiment and prejudice would allow. The
popular feeling against suicide has no logical, or
religious, or even moral root; it is simply the fruit
of ecclesiastical, not Christian, discipline; and is one
of the legacies — let it not displease Messrs. Murphy
and Whalley — of the Roman CathoUc Church. The
words "coward" and "fool," so freely hurled at the
suicide, are simply — words. The man who in full
health and strength, with all his faculties of body
and mind aUve and unimpaired, has nerve to put a
pistol to his head and blow out his brains, may be
a very selfish, or a very wicked man ; that depends ;
but most certainly he is not a coward; and till the
circumstances and motives which have prompted the
act are known, no one is entitled to say that the
man was a fool ; and in spite of all the eloquent dis-
course indulged in by popular orators, when the
occasion of some ill-starred tragedy or other has to
be "improved," it is questionable, supposing volun-
tary death were reached as easily and as pleasantly
as sleep, if the very men who inveigh so lustily
against suicide would stand at their posts an hour
after fierce trial had assailed them there. It may be
doubted if it be not the physical terrors attending on
death which are the main- preventives against suicide;
and if it be not precisely because he is less of a
coward than other men that the suicide affronts
those terrors.

In a conversation, the other day, on this and

222 ESSAY VI.

kindred subjects, the nobleness of submission to one's
fate was eloquently extolled, and the heroic conduct
of our unfortunate countrymen in Greece was cited,
as putting to shame the craven spirit that would
snatch a refiige from its troubles by a self-sought
death. But this eloquence, to one at least who had
the privilege of listening to it, seemed altogether
beside the mark. Yes, our countrymen's conduct
was heroic ; so heroic, indeed, as to make glow every
heart susceptible to the charms of chivalrous endu-
rance and devotion; to shame each base, selfish
instinct into hiding, at least for a time ; and to make
human Ufe look like a holy thing. But all this, like
so much that is said on the subject, has no bearing
whatever on the question under discussion. Yes,
these men bore themselves like heroes; what then?
Because we admire them, and would fain imitate
them, is that any reason why we should ourselves
submit, or call on others to submit, to an ordeal
which they, severe as was their trial, were happily
not doomed to face? But let us suppose a case;
suppose, for the sake of argument — no impossible
supposition — that balked of their expected booty, and
exasperated by what seemed to them treachery, the
Greek brigands had resolved to kill their prisoners by
fierce and lingering torture; that this resolution was
irrevocable, and known to be so by the intended
victims; suppose, too, that in attendance on the
prisoners, but not involved in their fate, there was a
medical man, armed with all the resources of his

EUTHANASIA. 223

craft; able, by means of chloroform, if willing, to put
these intended victims to an immediate and painless
death, and so save them from the hideous torments
awaiting them; what then?

With such a refuge open to them, it is not im-
possible that some of the victims would have refused
to profit by it; would have shown a Eed Indian's
fortitude, and have endured to the end all that their
savage captors could inflict. But it is also possible
that not one of that ill-starred band would have
made this choice; and it is almost certain that
some among them would have asked for the easier
death. But suppose that all had joined in entreating
the surgeon's aid; that all had implored him to use
the good gift committed to his charge, and save them
from the hideous and fruitless torture impending;
and suppose that, in answer to these entreaties, the
medical man had spoken eloquently about the " sacred-
ness of life," "submission to God's will," "the duty
of not quitting one's post except at the bidding of
one's commander," &c., &c., &c.; and had flatly re-
fused to have any hand in, or to give any assistance,
direct or indirect, to what he was pleased to call
self-murder; suppose all this; are there many men
living who will venture to maintain that the prayer
of these imhappy victims would have been an un-
righteous one; or that the conduct of their medical
attendant would not have been cold-blooded and
selfish ?

And if this be so ; if, in such an extremity as the

224 ESSAY VI.

one supposed, recourse to chloroform, as a refuge from
imbearable torture, may be permitted, what becomes
of the popular objections to its systematic use in cases
of fatal and painfiil disease? What is there in the
case supposed, to separate it from the thousands of
cases around us, wherein men and women have no
refuge from the torments they are writhing under,
except in death ? Why should recourse to chloroform
be permitted in the one case, yet sternly prohibited
in the others?

" The cases are not analogous," it may be said.
It is maintained, on the contrary, that they are strictly
analogous ; that a captive about to be tortured to death
by brigands is in an exactly analogous position to that
of a man struck down by a fatal disease ; and that, to
a man so struck down, Nature is as one of these pitiless
brigands, neither more nor less. Por, let it be borne
in mind, death by disease is always death by torture ;
and the wit of man has never devised torture more
cruel than are some of Nature's methods of putting her
victims to death. AU the talk about the kindness of
Nature, " the mighty mother," is rhodomontade which
no rational being could be guilty of, if he looked facts
straight in the face, and spoke only according to what
he saw. " Our mother" Nature may be, and mighty
she may be, but kind most assuredly she is not.

"Red in tooth and claw,
With ravine,"

she shrieks against that picture of herself.

EUTHANASIA. 225

For suppose — concrete examples, even though
imaginary, bring truth home to us better than
abstractions — that the captives, already spoken of as
in the hands of the Greek brigands, had been devoted,
not to tortures which would kill within a few hours,
but to treatment that would produce exactly the same
kind and the same amount of suflTering as Nature
inflicts in one of the milder forms — perhaps the very
mildest — by which she does her victims to death :
namely, consumption. Suppose they were being
subjected to systematic, but comparatively endurable
tortures, calculated to waste away their lives inch by
inch, just as natural disease would waste them: and
that there was no more hope of turning the brigands
from their purpose, than there is of arresting the
progress of the natural disease. Suppose, moreover,
that we were informed of the fate to which our
countrymen were being subjected : — Should we not
at once be ready to face any risk, to make any
sacrifice, in order to put a stop to what would
seem such a hideous atrocity? And yet, such is
man's consistency, acts which in brigands would
madden us, which would inipel us to move heaven
and earth to put a stop to them, or failing that, to
avenge them fiercely in blood, we look at patiently
when Nature is the author, find that all she does is
good, and string pretty phrases together to show our
sense of her might, her tenderness, and her love !

No ! the " mighty mother " whom complacent
optimists dehght to praise is not the being they

Q

226 ESSAY VI.

paint her, whatever else she may be: rather she is
a dread power, working, possibly, with what by analogy
may be called a purpose — though that purpose is
known to no man, nor is ever likely to be known —
or, she may be a mere blind force, exerting itself
to the utmost at all times, and in all directions, and
issuing in scenes of perpetually recurring beauty
and harmony, it is true, but also of perpetually
reonrri-g rapine and oruelty and Inst.

As to the beneficent action on the heart of minis-
trations to the sick, there can be no doubt but that
the praise commonly awarded to this service is well
deserved; it is certain that the sick-chamber is an
excellent school; that very many precious qualities
are fostered there; and that our characters often
issue from that ordeal, chastened, softened, humanized,
as perhaps no other discipline could fashion them.
But granting all this, there is no reason to suppose
that the adoption of the plan advocated in this essay
could appreciably interfere with such discipline ; for, in
the first place, the instinctive love of life is so strong
within us, that not every one struck down by fatal
disease would avail himself of the remedy it is proposed
to set within his reach ; and in the next place, illnesses
from which all hope of recovery is not gone, are
frequent enough and protracted enough, to furnish
all the training of this kind desirable.

It would appear then, that the objections likely
to be urged against such an extension of the uses of
chloroform as is advocated here, are of no real weight.

EUTHANASIA. 227

and that whatever force they may seem to possess,
they draw from prejudice rather than from any serious
investigation of the subject; that the moral and
physical evils which custom-ridden folk see in the
proposal, have no real existence ; and that the dangers
likely to attend on its adoption are imaginary.

But while the reasons — if they may rightly be
called reasons — urged against the proposal, disappear
one by one as they are looked into, the main reasons
adducible in its favour are grounded in the nature of
things, and grow stronger the more carefully they
are examined ; these reasons being : the terrible part
which physical suffering plays in the world's history,
and the sacredness of the duty incumbent on every
man, of lessening this suffering to the utmost of his
power. Complacent optimism, it is true, persists in
ignoring the facts which surround it, and in dreaming
dreams about the beneficent adaptation of all things
to an enjoyable end; about the steady, continuous,
necessary growth of good, and the as steady, con-
tinuous, necessary elimination of evil. In spite of
aU reason and all fact, it prates of the never-failing
progress, and the ultimate perfection of all things;
and the only event that seems much to disturb its
serenity is a doubt thrown upon the reality of the
views so dear to it.

But that our lot is not cast in any such scene of
** rose-water beneficence" as optimism declares it to
be, is, unhappily, only too clear to every man who
has courage to look realities in the face. So far from

228 ESSAY VI.

the world being constructed only on the principles of
beneficent design, and enjoyment being its sole aim, it
is a field of mortal struggle, wherein every organized
being wages, fi-om the beginning of its career to the
end, unceasing war with enemies of all kinds ; wherein
a universal struggle for mastery, and a universal
preying on the weak by the strong is incessant;
where conflict, cruelty, suffering, and death are in full
activity at every moment, in every place, even to the
minutest crick or cranny that microscopic existence
can occupy; and the only fact in all this scene of
carnage that can be pointed to as significant of be-
neficent design, is the continuous victory of the strong,
the continuous crushing out of the weak, and the
consequent maintenance of what is called " the vigour
of the race;" the preservation of the hardiest races,
and of the hardiest individuals of each race so pre-
served. But it must be borne in mind that, given
such a life and death struggle as this world offers,
the victory of the strong over the weak is inevitable ;
and although a beneficent result may be the issue of
it — beneficent, that is, after its kind — there is nothing
in the bare facts of the case to warrant the supposition
that the beneficence, such as it is, was designed; in
the next place, it must be remembered that the main-
tenance of the vigour of the race is but another phrase
for the maintenance of this perennial struggle under
conditions insimng its maximum of cruelty and suf-
fering; for the more vigorous the race, the more highly
it is organized ; and consequently, the more keen and

EUTHANASIA. 229

prolonged will be the struggle for existence among its
individual members, and the more intense the resultant
pain; and lastly, it may be observed that the end —
supposing the maintenance of the vigour of the race
be really an end — is a very inadequate one to the
means employed; and that the terrible suflTering
aroimd us is but poorly compensated for either by the
vigorous life the whole world teems with, or by the
sort of peep-show beauty, and harmony of colour and
sound, which are the net outcome of it all.

One of the main facts then, that men have to make
famiUar to their thoughts and to adjust their hves to,
is, that they are bom into a world on the painftd
riddle of which speculation can throw no light, but the
facts of which press hard against them on every hand ;
and from these facts the truth stands out clear and
harsh, that not enjoyment, but, in the main, struggle
and suflfering is what they have to look for, and that to
bring this suflfering into bearable proportions, should
be one of the chief aims of their lives.

For man's existence here forms no exception to
that of other organized beings. That he, too, has
to maintain a ceaseless struggle, now with his fellow
man, and now with the general conditions of hfe,
is clear as noon-day. With him, as with his fellow
denizens of this strange world, the natural provision
is, for the weak to go to the wall, and for the " vigour
of the race" to be maintained : but whereas his fellow
denizens have not the wit to escape from, or modify,
their fate, man has ; and one of the chief ways in

230 ESSAY VI.

which he shows that wit, is in his steady, persistent
efforts to oppose Nature's beneficent plan — so far as
he is concerned — for maintaining the vigour of the
race. For, as society advances, the weak are protected
more and more fi-om the savagery of the strong, and
remedies or alleviations are discovered for sufferings
which among more backward societies, as' among lower
forms of life, have to be endured in all their native
fierceness and protractedness ; the result being that
others besides the strong survive; and that Nature's
provision for stamping out the weak is thwarted.
But still, all remedies and alleviations to the
contrary, the fact remains that man's existence, like
that of other animals, is rooted in pain; that all
wants imply pain, and that aU enjoyment consists
merely in satisfying wants, cannot even be conceived
as consisting in anything else : that pain, therefore, is
the one prilordM fact lying at the root of eriste;ce
in all its forms ; that it is the one great reality amid a
crowd of appearances and illusions; and, as such, is
the cMef thing with which man has to deal. Enjoy-
ment is at best fleeting, and is seldom intense enough
to lead a man into Faust's temptation of wishing the
feeling of the moment to last. On the other hand,
how terribly real a thing pain is, is known to many
of us throughout a considerable portion of our lives,
and will be known to all, soon or late, however per-
sistently we may meanwhile shut our eyes to the
fact. So long, however, as we have the means of
satisfying each desire as it arises, all is well with

EUTHANASIA. 231

US, or seems so : and we put off the inevitable day
of reckoning as long as we can, and banish it as
much as possible from our thoughts; day after day
we go on, lured by hopes the vanity of which each
day demonstrates : and all the while there lies before
every one of us the common goal of fierce suffering
terminating in death. After all is said that can be
said, human hfe remains but a sorrowful thing at best,
and a real alleviation of its pains is the greatest service
which man can render to man.*

* Ifc is hardly necessary to observe that the above remarks apply merely
to the world as it is, and leave nntouched all questions of recompense and
adjustment hereafter. The optimist appeals, not to any fntore condition
of things, but to the world as it actually exists, here and now ; and it is this
world as it exists, here and now, which is appealed to in the text as refuting,
in a fashion that would be ludicrous were it not so terribly tragic, every
conceivable phase of optimism.

And if these views of the constitution of the world should be objected
to as gloomier and more ascetic than truth will warrant, it is answered that
they receive confirmation, direct or indirect, from the Man of Science and
the Divine alike. Mr. Darwin states Nature's command to be : " Multiply,
vary : let the strongest live, and the weakest die ; " from which plan there
results that "struggle for existence" which develops every form of selfish
rapacity, and maintains unimpaired " the vigour of the race." And in the
most powerful as well as most beautiful defence of Christianity that these
latter times have seen, the following passages occur :

" Now we come to the third natural informant on the subject of Religion ;
I mean the system and the course of the world. This established order of
things, in which we find ourselves, if it haff a Creator, must surely speak
of His will in its broad outlines and its main issues. This being laid down as
certain, when we come to apply it to things as they are, our first feeling is one
of surprise and (I may say) of dismay, that His control of the world is so
indirect, and His action so obscure. This is the first lesson that we gain
from the course of human affairs. What strikes the mind so forcibly and so
painfully is. His absence (if I may so speak) from His own world. It is a
silence that speaks. It is as if others had got possession of His work." . .

" Let us pass on to another great fact of experience, bearing on Religion,
which confirms this testimony both of conscience and of the forms of worship
which prevail among mankind; — I mean the amount of suffering, bodily and
mental, which is our portion in this life. Not only is the Creator far off, but
some being of malignant nature seems, as I have said, to have got hold of
us, and to be making us his sport. Let us say there are a thousand millions

2:J2 ESSAY VI.

And tbe worst pain of all, that attending the final
dissolution of our powers, is what it is now proposed
to bring such remedy to as science has discovered
and human ingenuity has contrived means to apply;
and if this remedy were of recognized and general
use, the greatest evil man has to submit to would be
so far modified as to lose its chiefest dread : death
might then be faced calmly by the timid as well as
the brave ; its sufferings might be met without quailing
by the weak as well as by the strong : those blessed
with great endurance might brave the worst to the
end ; those who cannot bear pain — and there are brave
men among those who cannot — would have a refuge
from it always open to them : and the mere fact of
knowing that such refuge was open, would give a
strength and patience which nothing else in the
world could give ; for it is a sense of hopelessness, the
knowledge that no help can come except through
death, that makes the suffering of a known fatal
disease so appalling ; from the almost unbearable

of men on the earth at this time ; who can weigh and measure the aggregate of
pain which this one generation has endnred and will endure from birth to
death ? Then add to this all the pain which has fallen and will fall npon onr
race through centuries past and to come. Is there not then some great gulf
fixed between us and the good GodP Here again the testimony of the
system of nature is more than corroborated by those popular traditions
about the unseen state, which are found in mythologies and superstitions,
ancient and modern ; for those traditions speak, not only of present misery,
but of pain and evil hereafter, and even without end. But this dreadful
addition is not necessary for the conclusion which I am here wishing to draw.
The real mystery is, not that evil should never have an end, but that it should
ever have had a beginning. Even a universal restitution could not undo
what had been, or account for evil being the necessary condition of good.
Bow are we to explain it, the existence of God being taken for granted,
except by saying that another will, besides His, has had a part in the dis-
position of His work, that there is an intractable quarrel, a chronic alienation,
between God and man ? " — Qramimci/r of Assent j pp. 391, 393.

EUTHANASIA. . 233

present, the patient is constantly looking to the still
more unbearable future, and it is wonderfiil how,
under such conditions, calm and patience are ever
possible at all.

Still more wonderful does it seem, when one reflects
on it, that knowing our constant Uability to these
terrible conditions, and that, soon or late, they have
to be passed through by every one of us, we can ever
so far banish our miserable fate from our thoughts,
as to give ourselves up heartily to our daily labours,
ambitions, and projects. A turkey-cock strutting in
the sun, and spreading his tail for the admiration of
beholders, a week or so before the dinner he will grace
in a fashion he so little thinks of, strikes one as a
spectacle hardly worthy of rivalry; but this turkey-
cock is an embodiment of sober sense compared with
poor human beings flouting their pale splendours in
beholders' eyes. Much may be said for the turkey-
cock : he knows nothing of oyster-sauce, nor has he
been told of the hideous death man condemns him
to die, simply that his poor head may appear on the
dish with the rest of his luckless, if savoury, body.
We, however, know what Hes before us in the im-
mediate future, but we strut and spread our tails in
the sun no whit th6 less. We act as if this earth
were our heritage for ever; as if disease and death
were no concern of ours; bearing ourselves after a
fashion that might well "make the angels weep," if
angels had patience to watch us.

In some respects, however, this bUndness and

234 ESSAY VI.

heedlessness serve us well; for it is not given to man to

"Look on the face of Tmth, and liFe."

A general knowledge of the lot that lies before us is
as much as we can bear; and there is perhaps not
one man living who would have heart to meet his
fate if all its details were made known to him; the
veil that hides the fixture from us is probably the ono
thing that saves us fi-om despair.

But still, though we know neither the hour nor
the form in which death will come to us, we know
that come he must, and that, be the manner of his
coming what it may, he will come attended by terrible
ministers ; and this being so, surely it is our part, as
rational beings, instead of passively submitting to the
inevitable, to make timely provision to meet it; and
to set in order, beforehand, for our extremest need,
such remedies as the great benefactors of our race
have brought within our reach. If, on the approach
of death, any man objects to use these remedies on
his own behalf; if, either fi:om a sense of duty, however
false, or fi:om confidence in his own powers of en-
durance, or from any other cause, he chooses to hold
out to the end, and to face the worst that may befall
him, by all means let him do so*: but for such of us
as are cast in a less heroic mould, let the remedies
we ask for be at hand : to all condemned to a hideous
death, and who feel unable to bear the agony of it,
let the medical attendant bring the relief of swift and
lasting unconsciousness; since we must die, let us.

EUTHANASIA. 235

at all events, have the consolation of dying by the
least painful death that beneficent skill can compass
for us.

And possibly the time may come when man wiU
no longer monopolize the finiits of science and skill,
but win extend to his feUow mortals of a lower type
the same immunity from violent suflfering which he
has already partly secured for himself; a time when
ana9sthetics will always be administered to the wretched
beasts destined for the table, and when so the sickening
horrors of the slaughter-house will be mitigated, if not
swept away. At present, any proposal of the kind
would be sure to meet with the scorn with which Phil-
istinism of all countries, and Enghsh Philistinism more
than others, Ustens to all projects which do not dove-
tail of their own accord with existing prejudices ; and
a serious attempt to compel men, under pains and
penalties, to inflict as Uttle suffering on the beasts they
slaughter or destroy, as is compatible with their death
or destruction, would be looked upon as merely another
illustration of that " maudlin sentimentaUty " which
met with such severe castigation from many popular
writers recently, on the appearance of a noteworthy
article on fox-hunting.

But nevertheless, that before very long such a pro-
posal as is here advocated may be actually carried out,
is not so impossible as may be thought ; society does
move on; and perhaps the one point in which its
progress is most unmistakeable and most marked is
the decreasing cruelty characteristic of modern times.

236 ESSAY VI.

The rudimentary attempts which have already been
made to bring the lower animals within the pale of
legal protection, are but one phase of a many-sided
movement; a movement that has for its objects the
suppression of all forms of needless suffering, and
the eradication, or at least the subordination, of those
savage instincts which have hitherto been so pre-
dominant in man's nature. Whatever may be said
as to the character of many of the changes now
taking place in society, one fact remains indisputable :
we are less cruel than we were; less indifferent to
inflicting pain on our fellow men, and more desirous
of shielding the animals we make use of from entirely
wanton torture; so that there really exist grounds
for hope that, soon or late, the poor ministers to man's
wants may be allowed to share in the advantages
wrung from nature by man's wit, and that the proposal
to secure for them a painless death will some day
seem no extravagant one. " Encore cinq cents ans,"
said Paul Louis Courier, some fifty years ago, " et je
pourrai parler a un prefet tout comme je vous parle ; "
and though it must be confessed that smaU way has,
as yet, been made towards realizing the hopeful
Frenchman's dream, still some advance has been won
even in that direction; let beast and bird take heart
then ; the world moves on ; " yet another five hundred
years" and they may be admitted to the privileges
secured by chloroform 1

And meanwhile let those manly, vigorous natures,
who treat with such lofty contempt all efforts to

EUTHANASIA. 237

diminish suffering not their own, remember that
some of the bravest men who ever lived have been
tender as women; and that a lordly indifference to
others' sufferings is not by any means incompatible
with a very strong objection to suffer in one's own
person; and besides, that even where a man is as ready
to take pain as to give it, indifference to others' feeUngs
may still be an un-heroic quahty. There is a saying
among some savage race or other: "when another
man suffers it is a piece of wood that suffers ; "
whereby the speaker desires to make known his
superiority to the maudhn sentimentality that can
be moved by any form of suffering outside itself.
Standing in its own bare nakedness, this feeling will
commend itself to few of the lustiest even, of those
who would fain set aside each humaner project by
the reproach of its unmanliness ; but their own feelings
mth regard to some kinds of suffering outside them-
selves are only stunted forms of the same savage
indifference with which the aboriginal man contem-
plates all such suffering : the original and vigorous
forms of this feeling are fast dying out of all societies
calling themselves civilized: it may be hoped that
these more stunted forms of it will one day also
disappear.

S. D. WILLIAMS, JuN.

ESSAY VII.

METHOD AND MEDICINE.

A celebrated physiologist recently began one of
-^^^ his lectures with the assertion that "la
medecine scientifique" did not exist; and not very
long after, a distinguished French surgeon expressed in
the pages of the album-number of the Figaro his
satisfaction at the renunciation of scientific methods
in the study of surgery. Two such remarkable state-
ments naturally excited much attention. They were
greedily seized upon by sprightly journalists, whose
pens, Uke the hands of Ishmael of old, waging war
against every one, rejoiced to find in the unsatisfactory
position of medicine a suitable object for attack. Paris
soon knew all these writers could tell of the short-
comings of medicine, and the bruit of the discussion
reached even London ears. Medical questions always
excite a certain amount of general interest, and for
the more curious portion of the public they possess a

METHOD AND MEDICINE. 239

peculiar kind of fascination. It is remarkable how
many persons profess to know a little — some, indeed,
a great deal — about medicine, whose public pursuits
. or private studies have never led them even to the
confines of the subject. Few reach a certain age
without considering themselves competent to dog-
matise, if not to practise, as physicians; and are
never willing to admit the alternative of the familiar
proverb aa to physic or folly at forty. To all such .
readers the newspaper comments on the opinions of
MM. Claude Bernard and Nelaton were of great
interest, and to some they were possibly a confirmation
of their own assumed ability to comprehend the
art of cure.

To others, these opinions, if not so pleasantly
reassuring, were no less interesting; for the progress
of medicine touches each one more or less nearly;
since on such progress, however slight, may depend
issues of the most momentous import. To these it
was really alarming to learn in the course of a few
months that scientific medicine was a fable, and,
moreover, that the very methods of modern science
were unsuited to the investigation of disease. The
absence of science was bad enough, but admitted, at
all events, the possibility of improvement. The second
statement, however, condemned the very methods by
which earnest workers had striven to advance, and
demanded the abandonment of all those instruments
of precision of which they had been so proud. The
fortress of knowledge was no longer to be assailed

240 ESSAY VII.

by the Chassepot and the Armstrong gun, but must
be breached by the bow and arrow and the catapult.
Modem methods have not made medicine perfect;
therefore, says Nelaton, Ml back on the older
methods, which, he might have added, left it very
imperfect. Medicine has not yet reached the position
of a strictly experimental science, and the physician
is consequently unable to modify and control the
phenomena of disease with the same accuracy that
the chemist can regulate the combination and decom-
position of his chemicals : therefore Claude Bernard
denies the existence of scientific medicine. It may
not be without profit to consider these statements
by the light which the history of medicine affords.
In so doing we shall see how the progress of this
branch of knowledge has been retarded by false
method; and the lessons derived from the study of
past error may teach that better method by which
the development of the scientific medicine of the
future may be hastened.

Taking its origin in that instinct which impels us
to offer aid to the suffering and to endeavour to miti-
gate pain, medicine must have existed, as Celsus has
said, universally and from the begraning of time. The
first successful attempts in allaying pain must have
appeared so miraculous, that their author no doubt
acquired a higher position in the esteem of his kind
than has ever since fallen to human lot. Reverenced,

METHOD AND MEDICINE. 241

and possibly worshipped diiring life, lie was deified
at death. The deification demanded an altar, the altar
required priests. Thus we find the priesthood sur-
rounding the cradle of medicine, as we everywhere
find them at the origin of civilization and the birth of
knowledge. In the temples they fostered the small
beginnings of the healing art; but called upon to
exercise greater powers than they possessed, they
cultivated credulity by a judicious exhibition of the
marvellous. The unlimited faith of the people tempted
them too strongly; they promised all that was asked,
and, like other charlatans, they had great success.
As priests serving a divinity they avoided aU direct
responsibihty ; thus in failure their reputation was not
compromised, while in success it was established. They
never forgot that the bolts of Jove fell on ^sculapius
for his boldness in restoring the dead to life; they,
on the contrary, exercised their powers with singular
discretion, and saved themselves from the temptation
to imitate their master by driving the dying from
their doors. In this last respect quacks of more
recent date have been equally discreet.

If in the charge of the priests of Apollo and
-^sculapius, medicine did not advance, the practice
of the art was nevertheless kept ahve, until, in
the steady progress of human knowledge, better
hands were prepared . to receive it. The temples
of jEsculapius — Asclepia, as they were called — long
maintained their reputation; and the priests, the
Asclepiadae, many of whom were descendants of

242 ESSAY VII.

-^sculapius, did some service for their successors by
preserving records of the cases of their patients on
the votive tablets which adorned the temples' walls.
The Asclepia built on very healthy sites, often near to
some mineral spring, were indeed convalescent insti-
tutions from which the incurable were excluded. The
health-resorts of our own day had their prototypes in
these shrines dedicated to the tutelary divinities of
health. The celebrity of some of the temples attracted
to them large numbers of patients, and in this way the
first opportunities occurred of studying disease sys-
tematically. The rich fields of observation thus formed,
and the skill of the priests in recognizing and treating
the maladies of their votaries, made these shrines the
earliest schools of medicine. The Asclepiadae, who were
the first teachers, soon had competitors; and schools
of medicine and philosophy began to be estabhshed
independently of the sacerdotal influence. Of these
the most celebrated was that of Crotona, and its most
illustrious teachers were Democedes and Pythagoras
(580 B.O.).

The bitter opposition with which these new seats of
learning were viewed by the priests, lasted for many
generations ; and we may trace it in the charge made
long after against Hippocrates, of steaUng the votive
tablets and burning the temple of Cos. But in spite
of the opposition of the Asclepiada9 the study of medi-
cine was continued by the philosophers, who taught
the results of their own personal experience, and re-
corded, as far as possible, facts and traditions. The

METHOD AND MEDICINE. 243

priests for the most part neglected their opportunities
of study, and the independent workers of the other
school observed phenomena carefiilly but not fruit-
fully ; for until late in their history they did not reach
even the crudest application of induction.

The mysterious workings of nature were to the
minds of both schools the results of the activity of super-
natural beings, and as such were regarded as beyond
the powers of the human mind. Every attempt to treat
disease required the direct interposition of a divinity,
without which the skill of priest or philosopher was
alike in vain. The gods sent disease, and the gods
possessed the remedy. Such was their creed. They
held it bhndly ; but even in the time of their greatest
darkness, protests were not wanting. Experience had
taught men something, and every attempt which the
philosopher led by his experience made to reheve
disease, was a protest against the paralysing influence
of such a creed, and every tittle of success which
attended such attempts hastened its fall. The dis-
coveries made by instinct, or offered by chance, were
seized upon and developed by reason. The philoso-
phers soon found that nature might be interrogated
.without danger, and that human curiosity was not
always punished by the gods. In their inquiries,
"de natura rerum," the first investigators analysed
the universe. The earth which supports us, the air
which surrounds us, the water which bathes the
earth, and the fire which lends its heat, were to them
in turn universal principles; and the phenomena of

244 ESSAY VII.

nature were the result of the harmony or the antag-
onism of the attributes of these elements. These first
students of nature, however barren their speculations,
did great work. They first asserted the right of man
to investigate nature and explain her phenomena
without reference to a deity; and they thus began
that emancipation of the intellect from the tyranny of
the supernatural, which it was the chief glory of their
successors to complete.

Medicine was so closely bound up with the
philosophy of this period, that it could not fail to
acquire new vigoiu* from the fi-ee spirit of inquiry
which began to prevail. The philosophers of all the
schools were busy in making observations, instituting
experiments, and collecting facts; and although they
erred in the haste with which they formed theories,
yet their pursuit of truth was not barren. They
began to inquire into the nature and causes of disease,
and these inquiries became in the hands of Pythagoras
the foundation of hygiene and etiology. He held that
the healthy equilibrium of all the functions of the
body was only to be maintained* by the strict regimen
to which he submitted his disciples. To Pythagoras,
health was the result of moderation in diet, disease
the effect of excess. To him we also, according to
Celsus, owe the first knowledge of critical days in
disease, the theory of which was the first application
of the science of numbers to medicine. The vital
principle of Pythagoras was heat,^^^ and his explanation
of the phenomena of life has found a more elaborate

METHOD AND MEDICINE. 245

form in the doctrines of the vitalists of modern times.
The school of Pythagoras also endeavoured to learn
something of the structure and functions of the body
by the dissection of animals, and thus made the first
discoveries in anatomy, and hazarded the first specu-
lations in physiology. The doctrine of temperaments
and of heredity, and the theory of generation here
found their first exponents. Anaxagoras of Olazomenae,
to whom Aristotle attributes the doctrine of the im-
mortaUty of the soul, also in his school advanced
medicine by encouraging the study of anatomy, and
speculating on the causes of acute diseases, which he
attributed mainly to bile.^^^ Democritus of Abdera was
also another who prepared the way for Hippocrates
by his works on epidemics; and he anticipated the
application of morbid anatomy to the explanation of
symptoms, by seeking for alterations in the viscera
of animals to account for death. All these schools
treated disease in a simple fashion; their materia
medica was chiefly vegetable, but dietetics were the
basis of their treatment.

This knowledge was widely diffused, and in every
training school of ancient Greece accidents were
treated according to the principles taught by the
philosophers. The opportunities for treating diseases
and injuries in the gymnasia were by no means in-
frequent, and consequently some of the gymnasiarchs,
as the chiefs of these training schools were called,
acquired great reputations as healers of disease. One
of them, Herodious, became the first physician of his

246 ESSAY VII.

time, and had the good fortune to teach Hippocrates.
His chief merit consisted in the attention he paid to
diet and general hygiene, and the effects of his
teaching may be traced in the writings of his im-
mortal pupil. On another account he perhaps deserves
mention, for he is said to have strictly insisted on
payment for his advice.

Medicine gained much from the philosophers, both
as an art and as a science. They indicated the
methods by which it might be advanced, and by their
speculations and experiments made the time ripe for
the appearance of the great master — Hippocrates. It
is a very interesting fact that the family from which
he sprung repudiated, at an early date, the ignorant
pretensions and mummeries of the priesthood, and
practised medicine without claiming any special
sanctity. With a noble candour, this family declared
its knowledge to be the result of experience, and
founded its practice on the observation of disease.

During the three hundred years it flourished, no
less than seven of its members bore the name of
Hippocrates, and as several of them contributed to
the Uterature of medicine, it can easily be imagined
that the commentators have had a fine field for the
exercise of their ingenuity. So successful have they
been in their work, that some authors have even denied
that any such person as Hippocrates ever existed,^^^
and a theory has been advanced that the Hippocratic
writings are the product of a school. There is little
doubt that several of the treatises bearing the name

METHOD AND MEDICINE. 247

of Hippocrates were written by his disciples, but the
authenticity of the works on which the fame of
the great physician rests has been proved. Of the
seven of the one name, Hippocrates the Great
was the second, and is said to have been a lineal
descendant of j3Esculapius in the eighteenth generation.
Bom (460 B.C.) of a family of physicians, from his
earliest years he was attracted by those subjects which
engrossed the attention of all about him. From his
father, and from his master, Herodicus, he learned all
the speculations of the Pythagoreans and the practice
of the gymnasiarchs ; and the accumulated experience
of his family was at his command. With the instinct of
true genius, he quickly saw that in medicine, pro-
bably more than in any other subject, the only sure
basis of knowledge is the observation of actual phe-
nomena, and that all doctrines and speculations
should be absolutely based on observed facts. This
idea once clearly conceived soon bore fruit. In
the archives of his family, collected during many
generations, and in the votive tablets in the temples
of his great ancestor, he found records of disease ex-
tending over hundreds of years. These votive tablets,
stating the nature of the disease and the treatment of
each patient, were, indeed, the rude beginnings of that
system of case-taking which Hippocrates founded, and
all physicians have since followed. There was this dif-
ference, however, that the votive tablets allowed by
the priests only recorded the successful cases, while
Hippocrates recorded his failures also. It may be said

248 ESSAY VII.

to the honour of medicine that his noble love of truth
has always found imitators: so alas! has the seMsh
reticence of the priests. The mass of materials thus
ready to his hand he carefully arranged and interpreted
by the light of his own experience. Every speculation,
every hypothesis, was submitted to the crucial test of
observation, and no conclusion was adopted which this
test did not confirm. Face to face with the phenomena
of nature, he allowed no preconceived notion to
lead him astray or warp his judgment, but reverently
and patiently his great mind gathered together and
classified its facts with a loyalty to truth never sur-
passed. Thus his works are splendid monimients of
the most patient study and the most accurate
observation.

Among the most remarkable of his writings are
those On Fractv/res and On the Articulations y which
especially arrest our attention by the large knowledge
of anatomy which they exhibit. Although human
anatomy was not practised in his time, Hippocrates
must have had a very thorough aquaintance with the
bony skeleton to have written two treatises so full of
accurate knowledge of osteology and sound surgery.

The physical philosophy of the period naturally
served as the basis of his theory of medicine. Many
of the phenomena of life found their explanation in the
doctrine of the elements of things; and the general
belief in the existence of a power which directly
controls all things in their natural state, and restores
them when preternaturally disordered, led to the in-

METHOD AND MEDICINE. 249

vention of the hypothesis of the principle which he
called Nature. This general principle he regarded
as the great restorative power in disease, a true vis
medicatrix. "Nature," as his school said, "is the
physician of diseases,"

The four elements of which the body was sup-
posed to be formed led him to elaborate the doctrine
of temperaments. These he made to depend on four
humours — the blood, the phlegm, the bile, and the
atrabile; and excess or defect in any of these was
the immediate cause of disordered health. This
theory was the beginning of that humoral pathology
which from time to time has ever since ruled medical
thought. In his pathology he was seldom tempted
to speculate on any but the immediate causes of
disease: when he did so he was remarkably sound,
as is proved by his views on the epidemic constitutions
of the seasons, which still hold good.

There is one other point in his pathology most
worthy of note; it is this, that he founded it on
physiology. He saw, it may be dimly, but still he saw,
the great law which governs modern progress : that in
disease we have to deal with no new forces but only
with the variation of physiological action. This led
him to study the natural history of maladies, and to
perfect the doctrine of crises or the natural tendency
of certain diseases to a cure at certain periods. And
on this observation of the course of disease when
uninterfered with, he built up his treatise on prognosis,
which was the first formal exposition of the laws which

/

250 ESSAY YU.

regulate the succession of morbid phenomena. " He
who would know correctly beforehand those that will
recover and those that will die, and in what cases the
disease will be protracted for many days, a^d in what
cases for a shorter time, must be able to form a judg-
ment from having made himself acquainted with all the
symptoms, and estimating their powers in comparison

with one another One ought al§o to consider

promptly the influx of epidemical diseases and the

constitution of the season But you should

not complain because the name of any disease may
not be described here, for you may know aU such as
come to a crisis in the aforementioned times, by the same
symptoms." ^*^ Such are the words of Hippocrates at
the end of his Prognostics, and the last sentence is
a clear statement of a reduction of the phenomena of
disease to such laws as give prevision. In other words,
the development of medicine as a science of observation
was the great result which the physician of Cos
attained.

In the treatment of disease Hippocrates did Httle.
He founded the school which is now-a-days called the
expectant, and which trusts to assisting nature and
aiding the tendency to recovery, rather than to blind
attempts to cut maladies short. To Hippocrates, as
to many of the moderns, nature was the great power
for good in disease.

"Ipsa suis pollens opibus, nil indiga nostri."

He had a tolerably copious materia medica, but he

METHOD AND MEDICINE. 251

used it cautiously, now and then only endeavouring to
correct some unfavourable symptom by prescribing on
the principle that contraries are the cure of contraries.
His management of the diet of his patients was re-
markably advanced; and the sagacious observation
which regulated his practice in this respect has ren-
dered his essay On Regimen in Acute Diseases a model
of its kind. Of his other works those On Epidemics,
On Airs, Waters, and Places, and the Aphorisms, are
the most famous. The treatise On Airs, Waters, and
Places, is especially noteworthy as the first formal expo-
sition of the principles of public health. Nay, more :
treating as it does of the eflFects of chmate and locahty
on man's moral and physical nature, and of the influ-
ence on his character of the institutions under which
he lives, it was the beginning of social science, and
the anticipation of that " theory of the media " which
Auguste Comte has elaborated in his Positive Philosophy.
The reader of Buckle's History of Civilization will
recognize in the chapter on the "influence exercised
by physical laws over the organization of society and
the character of individuals," a modem development
of the sketch which Hippocrates lefl). The Aphorisms,
pronoimced by Suidas to be " a performance surpassing
the genius of man," have in all ages been recognized
as the most splendid monument of the genius of their
author. Models of condensed thought and brevity of
expression, pregnant with the rich results of the
life-long observation of the greatest of observers,
these aphorisms have won the admiration of all time.

252 ESSAY VII.

Such was Hippocrates the Great, whom some have
condemned as separating medicine from philosophy.
Was he not rather the first who saw that his pre-
decessors had lost themselves in the immensity of
the too vast and comprehensive plan which they had
embraced, and that the division of labour was the
necessity of progress P In this sense he did separate
medicine from philosophy; not degrading it, but
raising it to the level of the highest branch of know-
ledge, by giving it that method of induction which
was the foundation of all science. He first collected
the materials hitherto formless, and gave them form.
He first constructed that classification of facts in medi-
cine which based upon analysis and comparison led to
scientific generalization and the exposition of law. In
a word, he founded that most fi:*uitfiil of all methods,
induction, which his great successor Aristotle adopted,
and which the greatest of modem philosophers per-
fected. Judged by the dogmas he advanced, the claim
of Hippocrates to the title of philosopher would be
slight; but tested by the method he employed and
the work he accomplished, he was in truth the first
great medical philosopher — great among the greatest,

in his own words ifirpbe ydp ^»X<5<fo^oc i<r69iOQ,

The inductive method raised medicine from a
purely empirical condition to the dignity of a science
of observation. The hmits of health and disease w6re
fairly defined. The careful observation of symptoms
led to the estabUshment of laws which enabled the
physician to recognize any malady, and foresee its

METHOD AND MEDICINE. 253

course, crisis, and termination. Rules were framed
for the use of remedies which were held to act by
aiding the natural forces of the body, not by creating
new forces; and the art of cure consisted in the art
of aiding nature in her tendency to reestabUsh health.
Hippocrates studied disease as an astronomer the
heavens, and was equally powerless to modify or
control the phenomena he observed. Nature was the
healer of diseases, and man must stand submissively
by while she worked her will; at most he could
aid her tendencies when favourable, and when un-
favoTU-able, he could only struggle feebly and blindly
to restore her to a better course. This, the highest
result of the medicine of observation, was not satis-
factory to those who desired the power of mastering
disease ; they felt, as Asclepiades afterwards expressed
it, that this medicine of Hippocrates was a mere
meditation upon death — OavdTov nBkhtiv.

Even while the great master lived there were many
who rejected this position for medicine; men who
failed to descry in nature that kind and considerate
mother of which he spoke, but, on the contrary,
felt her to be a harsh and vicious stepmother against
whose rule they must rebel. In the struggle with
disease these men would be no passive observers :
they longed for a greater and more active materia
medica than the school of Cos gave them, and they
found in the empirical administration of drugs the
solace of a bhnd activity. It was not, however,
till after the foundation (300 B.C.) of the great

254 ESSAY VII.

school of Alexandria that circumstances occurred
which gave these opinions their full power, and led
to the estabhshment of the sect of the Empirics.
It is a remarkable fact in the history of method that
the splendid results which Hippocrates obtained by
the appKcation of induction, should have had so little
influence in leading others to foUow in his footsteps.
This may be partly accounted for by the absence from
his works of any formal exposition of his method.
Aristotle, the son of a physician, was imbued with
the inductive spirit of his predecessor, but he obeyed
it less impKcitly, and too often allowed his love of
hypothesis to overrule his facts. The grand results
arrived at by Aristotle were, however, insuflScient to
keep men in the slow and sure path of scientific
caution, and so when the first great discoveries
in human anatomy were made at Alexandria, the
spirit of speculation ran wild. The great anatomists,
Herophilus and Erasistratus, it is true, were not guilty
of these errors. The men who made out the functions
of the nervous system and of the lungs, and who
almost reached the discovery of the circulation of the
blood, recognizing as they did the relation between
the vigour of the heart and the strength of the pulse,
were too well trained by their anatomical studies to
indulge in the fabrication of theories. They were, on
the contrary, more inclined to discard all theory in
their practice, and rely upon experience as their only
guide.

That the practical aspect of medicine was not

METHOD AND MEDICINE. 265

lost sight of in the Alexandrian school is shown by
the division of the art into the three branches of
dietetics, pharmacy, and surgery. The first, the
department of the physician, comprehended, besides
the regulation of diet, every circumstance bearing on
the preservation or restoration of health. The second,
in addition to the preparation of drugs, included the
treatment of ordinary cases of disease, and the per-
formance of many of the less important operations in
surgery, and answered to the province of the general
practitioner of modem times. Surgery, which had
previously, together with medicine, been in the hands of
the tarpoc, was now allotted to a special class of workers.
This division of labour produced its best effects in the
impulse it gave to surgery, which was practised by
the professors at Alexandria with an amount of skill
and boldness equalled by no other school of antiquity.
The many discoveries in anatomy led no doubt to this
great development of surgery, but imfortunately they
also led to a vast amount of unfounded speculation.

The more sanguine investigators, dazzled by the
revelations of the anatomists, began to beheve that
the victory of medicine over disease was at hand ; and
in their desire to hasten this consummation, they
allowed their theories to outstrip their facts. A
reaction was inevitable. The scepticism which Pyrrho
had introduced into the philosophy of the time ex-
tended to medicine, and reached its highest development
in the views of the Empirics. These men, wearied
by the vanity of theory, and in despair of understanding

256 ESSAY VII.

the mechanism of disease, even denied the value of the
laws which Hippocrates had so carefully arrived at,
and declared that it was only necessary to watch the
phenomena of disease, to discover by the sole aid of
experience what remedies are best fitted to reUeve
its symptoms. The nature and functions of the
body generally, or of the parts affected, with the action
of remedies upon it, and the changes in structure and
function produced by disease constituted, in their opinion,
a kind of knowledge impossible to attain, and even if
attained unnecessary to guide them in practice. Their
opponents, the Dogmatists, took the other view, and
investigated what we call in the present day the general
principles of physiology, pathology, and therapeutics.
The latter school aimed at reaching truth by hypothesis
and ratiocination; the Empirics would banish aU
ratiocination fi'om their method, and reduce it to a
simple observation of facts. The truth was on both
sides. Leibnitz has said that systems are true in
their affirmations but false in their negations, and this
is profoundly true of these rival schools. "The
boldest dogmatist professes to build his theory upon
facts, and the strictest empiric cannot combine his
facts without some aid fi'om theory." ^^^

This controversy, long slumbering, thus burst into
all its fiery vigour in the Alexandrian school, and has
never since died out. Disputants have always been
forthcoming on either side, and when facts in support
of their positions have failed, they have usually de-
voted themselves to throwing dust in the eyes of their

METHOD AND MEDICINE. 257

opponents, and obscuring truth by the introduction of
verbal subtleties and barren refinements. On both
sides a temporary triumph has too often been pur-
chased at the costly sacrifice of truth, and thus the
vigour which might otherwise have done much to
advance medicine has rather acted as an impediment
to its progress. The accidents of time have oddly
enough left us by no means an equal legacy of the
writings of the rival sects. Of all the wordy warfare
which raged between them, the polemical productions of
the Dogmatists remain in abundance, but not a single
tract of the Empirics has survived. Celsus has given,
however, in his remarks on the history of medicine, so
candid and impartial an account of their views, that
from his time to the present, a succession of zealous
disciples has never failed. The standard of experience
has never wanted a bearer ; on the contrary, in every
stage of the evolution of medicine great authorities have
been proud to bear the colours of the Empirics to
the van. Even in our own day, when it might have
been thought that the brighter rays of science would
have dissipated the mist, which in the past prevented
the disputants from recognizing the presence of truth
in both camps, a champion has been found, who speaks
in no uncertain tone. Witness M. Nelaton:

"I am happy to see the rising generation refuse to follow those
false appearances of exact and profound science borrowed almost ex-
clusively from microscopical research, and attach itself to the study of
surgery, based upon the great indications furnished by clinical obser-
vation. It is because they drew their inspirations from these principles
that the great masters of the beginning of this century, and especially

S

258 ESSAY VII.

Dapnytren, the most glorious amongst them, have given to the French
school that legitimate renown which it still enjoys throughout the whole
world." («)

A nineteenth century reproduction of the opinions
expressed by the Empirics some three hundred years
before the beginning of the Christian era I Nay, M.
Nelaton has done more, he has made the empiricism
of his school more thorough than that of the strictest
of the ancient sect. Modem invention has provided
a power of vision which the ancients never dreamed
of, and has enabled the modems to study the results
of disease with a thousandfold more accuracy, and
detect morbid changes which were a thousaiid times
too small for the unaided sight ; and yet in his loyalty
to the old method M. Nelaton refuses all. Possibly
not without some show of reason. The marvellous
precision which modem apphances have given to the
study of the details of morbid processes may have led
many to dwell too much on the discovery of apparently
insignificant facts, and to lose themselves in the abyss
of the infinitely little. While studying the shape of a
cell some may have forgotten to observe the coarser
progress of disease, and may have failed in that prac-
tical aptitude which is necessary to check its ravages.
But surely the occasional abuse of a method is no
argument against its use, and while the great problem
of the origin of disease remains unsolved, and the fine
distinctions which separate physiological development
fi:om morbid growth escape us, we ought to neglect
no means by which these secrets can be wrung from

METHOD AND MEDICINE. 259

reluctant nature. In the present state of knowledge
who is to decide on the value of new facts ? however
insignificant they may appear who is authoritatively to
declare them worthless? When in 1832 Tiedemann
discovered the trichina spiralis, and in 1835 Mr. James
Paget finding it in a piece of human muscle gave the
specimen to Professor Owen who described the parasite,
these observers had apparently only made out with
their microscopes an insignificant fact, and described
the cause of a condition which was for many years
afterwards regarded merely as a dissecting-room
curiosity. But when, some thirty years later, Zenker
demonstrated that this flesh- worm, in place of being a
harmless parasite, was the cause of a most alarming,
fatal, and hitherto inexplicable disease, the fact ceased
to be so insignificant.

"When this flesh-worm was seen more than thirty years ago, it
was little thought that the bit of muscle sent to Owen contained the
germs of a disease which might be carried in a living pig from Valparaiso
to Hamburg, and then kill almost the entire crew of a merchant vessel.
It has been recently related that a pig so diseased was shipped at
Valparaiso, and killed a few days before their arrival at ELamburg. Most
of the sailors ate of the pork in one form or another. Several were
aflbcted with the flesh-worm, and died. One only escaped being ill."<7)

Surgery, based upon anatomy and dealing chiefly
with alterations in the construction of the body, has
had a much less arduous task to perform than medi-
cine, which depends on physiology and has mainly to
treat aberrations of function. The older method of
unaided observation has on this account done more
for the surgeon who deals with the simpler phe-

260 ESSAY VII.

nomena, than it has for his colleague who has to deal
with the more complex. It is, therefore, not surprising
that it is as a surgeon that the modem representative
of the Empirics has won his fame. A more advanced
medicine will, however, greatly control the application
of surgical methods to the treatment of disease.
Cancer still yields only to the surgeon's knife; but
the knowledge of its structure and affinities which
the microscope has revealed to a great extent, will
some day enable it to be treated in a more scientific
way. In all such cases the necessity for surgery
is the opprobrium of medicine. The time may justly
be anticipated when the laws of its production
will be so well known, that the development of
cancer will be arrested and the surgeon's part for-
gotten. But such a day would never come if the
means at hand for studying morbid processes were all
cast aside, and man again took up the hopeless task
of analysing the infinitely small beginnings of disease
by his own unaided powers. It is true that the micro-
scope has as yet but in few instances made disease
more amenable to treatment; but we can hardly be
said to be worse off than before its invention, since we
are more intimately acquainted with many of the
problems we have to solve.

No ! M. Nelaton : the microscope is not useless,
but it and all other similar aids to research may be
unduly magnified until in the cultivation of a method,
we forget the object of investigation. As a protest
against this tendency, the letter in the Figaro was

METHOD AND MEDICINE. 261

true: in any other sense it was untrue. To deny
the microscope to the surgeon would be, as M.
Vernueil has said, as logical as to deny the telescope
to the .st^nomer. cLoal observ./on depe-din'g
on man's unaided powers played out all its forces
some two thousand years ago ; and now when all
the collateral sciences are pressing forward to its
aid with their reserve strength, it is no time to
delay the advance by the pohcy of isolation. The
"false appearances of exact and profound science" may
have led some astray, and here and there one in his
accuracy of observing details may have lost his power
of comparing phenomena, and so mingled in hurtful
confusion the important with the trivial. But over
this one sinner shall we all sink our aspirations for a
higher development of our art ? No ! through twenty
centuries the answer has ever been the same ; and that
appearance of exact science has always been the beacon
hght which has cheered men on in their struggle with
the obscurity of the unknown. The time for medicine
to rest on chnical observation alone, as its only method,
has passed away ; it must still be the one great means
of fitting a man to practise his art ; but he will be no
worse observer at the bedside because he has gone
through the intellectual training which the collateral
sciences aflford : on the contrary, he will come to his
daily task with his powers sharpened and with a vision
more far-reaching in proportion to the exactness and
extent of such training.

Simple observation has left us very powerless in

262 ESSAY yii.

the prevention of disease, and still more powerless
in its cure. "Medicina tota in observationibus/*
as Hoffinann defined it, was in his time, and is
still, too narrow a foundation to support that super-
structure of scientific medicine, which modern thought
hopes to raise. The mere collection of facts can
never constitute a science, but would simply allow
medicine to crystallize in the form of an art, which
each artist must learn for himself from the beginning,
since his own personal experience must be the basis
of his practice. We now seek to know more than the
succession and relation of morbid phenomena, we look
forward to being able to modify and control the phe-
nomena at will. This power can never come to us by
the cultivation of the empirical faculty alone; to gain
it we must weld together the good of the method of
the Dogmatists with the doctrines of the Empirics:
"utrumque, per se indigens, alterum alterius auxiho
viget." They who would oppose this union and confine
us to observation narrowed a la Nelaton, would prevent
the realization of this power, and their place in history
is not in the nineteenth century, but rather at the
beginning of our era.

Health and disease, the preservation of the one
and the cure of the other, have composed the problem
of medicine fi'om all time. Let us for a moment con-
sider what the solution demands. A knowledge of
the laws which govern the phenomena of life in its

METHOD AND MEDIOINE. 263

normal state, by teaching the necessary conditions,
will lead to the preservation of health. The second
part of the problem, the cure of disease, requires a
knowledge of the conditions immediately antecedent to
disease, and of the laws which determine the variation
of vital phenomena. To preserve health we must
be good physiologists : to restore it when disordered
we must know also pathology and therapeutics.
Medicine then in its widest sense is a triad of sciences,
and only when the two first parts are well advanced
can the third, therapeutics, be raised to a scientific
form, since it depends on a knowledge of the action
of remedies, both in the natural and morbid states.

The Dogmatists, therefore, when they asserted in
opposition to the Empirics, that the study of the
functions of the body in health and the changes pro-
duced by disease, as well as the action of remedies,
were essential preliminaries to the practice of medicine,
assumed a position which modem science upholds.
This method of theirs was so far in advance of their
knowledge of the subjects which they indicated as
essential, that they unfortunately endeavoured to fill
up the gaps by the aid of their imagination. Their
opponents, in the strength of their contempt for all
hypothetical explanations, therefore easily carried the
day. Accordingly we find the first physicians of
celebrity at Eome, belonging to the school of the
Empirics. Rome curiously enough for six hundred
years allowed no physicians to settle within her walls,
but confined the treatment of disease strictly to the

264 ESSAY VII.

priesthood. The worship of -ZEsculapius had been
transferred to Italy about the time Hippocrates was
born, but not without difficulty. The deputation sent
to Greece to transfer the person and worship of the
god, found the deity unwilling to be carried off, and he
was captured only by stratagem, and brought in the
form of a serpent to Italy.

About a century before the commencement of
the Christian era, several physicians had settled at
Rome, and doctrines other than those of the Empirics
began to find acceptance. The disputes between the
rival schools became as fierce as at Alexandria, and
new systems of medicine were constructed with an
equally fatal celerity. The result was the degradation
of medicine, which became a tissue of the most
frivolous subtleties.

The merit of the physician was no longer estimated
by his knowledge of disease, but rather by the number
and complexity of his recipes. But when the battle
of the schools was at its highest, and medicine was
at its lowest level, the illustrious Galen came upon
the scene (165 a.d.). Professing to be the restorer
of the medicine of Hippocrates, be soon became the
despot of medical thought, and reigned for twelve
centuries with an authority so great that men, rather
than question his opinions, preferred to doubt the
correctness of their own observations. He gave tha
teachings of Hippocrates a brilliant and systematic
character, but in so doing he sullied their purity by
the fi:ee introduction of hypothetical matter. He re-

METHOD AND MEDICINE. 265

stored medicine to the path of progress, and gave "a
true impulse to the workers of his time ; but a long
halt followed, for the night of the dark ages was at
hand in which no man could work.

"Ibant obscuri sola sub nocte per umbram."

About this time the philosophy of the east began
to influence Roman thought, and the Jews who were
the chief exponents of it gradually introduced their
belief that all serious diseases were direct punishments
from God, and that to attempt to cure them was to
interfere with the course of divine justice. The
miracles which the Founder of Christianity had per-
formed in Judea, and that power over disease which
He had transmitted to His Apostles, gave support
to the doctrines of Jewish philosophy. The influence
of the church, although it was exercised against the
magic rites which had been introduced from the east,
nevertheless favoured the tendency to superstition.
The behef in the power and activity of supernatural
beings was a doctrine of the early fathers, and they
attributed the cures of diseases made by the Pagan
physicians to the assistance of these evil spirits.^*'

In the same way we find all epidemics attributed
to the influence of demons. Origen, for example,
has the foUowing :

" Et siquid audacter dicere oporteat, si quas hisce in rebus partes
habeant daamones dicemus, illis famem, arborum vitiumque sterilitatem,
immodicos calores, aeris oorruptionem ad perniciem fructibus afferendani,
mortemque interdum animantibus et pestem hominibus inferendam
tribui oportere. Horum omnium auctores sunt deemones/'^®) . . .

266 ESSAY VII.

St. Augustme, also, speaks no less decidedly, as to
the causes of the prevalence of epidemics:

** Accipinnt enim ssBpe potestatem et morbos immittere, et ipsnm
aerem yitiando morbidam reddere." <^^)

The church, however, by its teachings, did even
more: it bade men no longer think of their bodies,
but devote all their attention to spiritual concerns.
The body and its ailments were to be despised.
Diseases were no longer to be subjects of study, but
were to be regarded as divine inflictions, sent to wean
man from giving too much thought to his perishable
frame. Some maladies were even esteemed to be proofs
of sanctity; and the most loathsome one of all, leprosy,
which was very prevalent among the early Christians,
was referred by a father,^"^ writing at a later date, to
the permission accorded to the demon of disease to
punish Gr0D*s people for their sins. What a melancholy
relapse was this from the scientific simplicity of the
teaching of the older physicians of the Hippocratic
school I

Running a parallel course with this relapse in
scientific thought was the decline of the Roman
Empire. The military despotism which raised itself
on the ruins of liberty, was utterly unfavourable to
that freedom of thought and speculation which is
necessary to progress. The good wiU of an autocrat
was to be gained by means less arduous than the
acquirement of knowledge, and thus learning ceased to
have its due reward, and fell in pubhc esteem. Super-
stition revelled in the darkness; the relics of the

METHOD AND MEDICINE. 267

cliurch, the bones of saints, and the blood of martyrs,
became the most approved remedies for disease; and
medicine, once again ia the hands of a priesthood, was
reduced to a confused mixture of jugglery and
empiricism.

The time was out of joint ; and from the position of
a science of observation, medicine fell back to the
purely empirical condition from which it had been
raised by the genius of Hippocrates. Thus it remained
for centuries, till, in the middle ages, the scholastic
spirit in giving it a fresh impulse unfortunately diverted
it stiQ more from the fruitftd method of induction, and
concentrated all the awakened energy of the age on
barren discussions based on verbal subtleties and
refined quibbles. The actual study of disease was no
longer cultivated, but all the intellect of the votaries
of medicine was given to mystic dreams of elixir vitcBy
and a vain industry in the multiplication of remedies.
In the hands of the Arabs medicine had fared a httle
better. The study of the Greek masters and of Galen
had been kept ahve; some new diseases, such as
smallpox and measles, were described for the first
time, but in other respects no advance of note was
made.

It was only in the fifteenth century, when the study
of Greek was generally revived, and the invention of
printing gave Europe new life, that the real return to
the better path began. An Enghshman, Thomas
Linacre, took a noble share in this restoration of
the medicine of Hippocrates by his translations from the

268 ESSAT VII.

Greek. He establislied professorships at Oxford and
Cambridge, for the special purpose of having the
works of Hippocrates explained; and in London he
•founded the CoUege of Physicians. This college
received power to grant Ucences to practise medicine,
a power which had previously been confined to
the bishops. Can any fact tell more eloquently of
the low position to which medicine had declined?

Alchemy and astrology, and magic of all kinds
were however not at first much shaken by the revival
of learning. The alchemists still cherished the hope
that the elixir vitca might be discovered, and by their
studies kept the spirit of inquiry ahve and directed
it into ways sometimes usefiil though generally fan-
tastic. They were really the founders of experimental
science, the precursors of the modem chemist, and
the first to apply to the explanation of life chemico-
physical laws.' The problem of medicine, however,
baffled their powers of analysis ; and so the energy
which in another period of history would have been
applied to the bedside study of morbid conditions was
by these men, in their impatient desire to know all
things, devoted to the multiphcation of remedies by
the discovery of new metals. The general intellectual
condition of the time was very low, the credulity of the
people was unlimited, and a catalogue of their gro-
tesque beliefs would make a chapter at once most
interesting and most sad. The superstition which
had spread all over Europe under the fostering care
of the dominant church, could not last for ever.

METHOD AND MEDICINE. 269

The revival of letters and the pursuit of knowledge
were begining to sap the foundations of authority.
Even the empty dreams of the alchemist were doing
good work, in sustaining a spirit of inquiry inde-
pendently of the priesthood. The fetters which
bound men hand and foot as the servile tools
of authority, were weakened by all these means as
by a slow consuming rust, till at the magic touch of
Luther they fell off.

Ten years after the great charter of rehgious
freedom was won, Paracelsus, in imitation of Luther,
pubhcly burned the writings of Galen and Avicenna
at Basle. By this act he struck a decisive blow
at that slavish reverence for the opinions of the
ancients which had been the bane of progress. The
writings of Gtilen had been regarded with almost
the same pious regard as the utterances of the church ;
for centuries he had been the pope of medicine. Armed
with his own elixir, Paracelsus cared not for the
writings of his predecessors, in his own hand he
carried the secret of Ufe, and this pope he regarded
as an object to be trampled on. Shameless in his
boasting, impure in his hfe, ignorant of nearly aU
literature, Phihp Bombastes Paracelsus was never-
theless one of the most remarkable characters of the
age. As Hippocrates was the physician of Greece,
so, he announced, was he the physician of Germany,
powerful over all diseases, and carrying in his beard
alone more knowledge than had all the imiversities.
Dying in spite of his elixir at the age of forty-eight.

270 ESSAY VII.

he lived long enough to revolutionize medicine and
establish a school, which sought in chemical laws an
explanation of all the phenomena of health and
disease.

In maMng his efforts in this direction, he showed
that he clearly comprehended the great need of his
times. Medicine had become a field for the wildest
speculation; no hypothesis was too absurd to find
acceptance. The mystery of life was so fascinating
a problem, and men were so eager to solve it, that
any one who promised to point out the way was
followed with a confidence as unwavering as it was
blind. In this respect Paracelsus sinned ahnost as
badly as his fellows. Having indicated the means of
checking this insane behef in theories, by fixing the
attention on the study of chemical phenomena, and by
teaching the great doctrine that vital actions might
be reduced to the level of physical laws, he well-nigh
undid the usefulness of his reform by the visionary
notions he advanced. For instance, among his physio-
logical dogmas we find that of the existence of the
ArchaBus. This ArchaBus was a Httle demon who from
his throne in the upper part of the stomach superin-
tended the digestive process, sorting out the poisonous
matters fi:*om the food, and giving the aliment those
virtues which are essential for assimilation. The
Archaeus was the friend to whom the physician should
look for help in the treatment of disordered health,
and all drugs should be directed against the stomach
so as to influence its ruler. In the same quaint spirit

METHOD AND MEDICINE. 271

of mysticism Paracelsus attributed disease to several
causes: the first of these was the "Ens astrorum,"
which acted by modifying the atmosphere, and poison-
ing it with arsenical, mercurial, and saline properties ;
the second was the " Ens veneni," which resided
in the food, and caused putrefaction of the humours
when the ArchaBus was caught napping, or was disin-
clined fi:'om any cause to do his work. The others were
the "Ens naturale," the "Ens spirituale," and the "Ens
deale;" the last embracing all the efiects of divine
predestination.^*^^ All of these entities acted with
similar precision, and were equally potent for evil.
All morbid states were held to be the result of
chemical action, the effervescence of salts, the com-
bustion of sulphur, or the coagulation of mercury.
The last when sublimed caused mania, when precipi-
tated gout ; and in such fashion, the causation of all
diseases was defined with an exactness that the modern
physician in the uncertainty of his knowledge must often
envy.

Paracelsus made some important discoveries :
he added many metallic remedies to the materia
medica; and he vigorously condemned the absurd
habit of combining fifty or sixty remedies in every
formula, insisting on the equal efficacy (or possibly
inefficacy) of simpler prescriptions containing only
six or seven. Charlatan as he was, "le plus fou
des medecins, et le plus medecin des fous,"^*^^ Philip
Bombastes Paracelsus was nevertheless powerful for
good: he gave the study of chemistry a great im-

272 ESSAY VII.

petus, by declaring that it was necessary to the
treatment of disease, and he first awakened men
thoroughly to the possibility of finding some explana-
tion of life other than in the invention of metaphysical
speculations. It is a noteworthy fact that the scholarly
and sceptical Erasmus was a behever in Parcelsus, and
consulted him about his health; the correspondence
which passed between them has been preserved.

The fabrication and the grave acceptance of such
views as those which formed the half-drunken utter-
ances of Paracelsus in his chair at Basle, seem very
unaccoimtable, till the abject superstition of the time
is called to mind. As evidence of the creduhty which
prevailed even later, there is no more amusing instance
than the story of the golden tooth, in which nearly all
Germany believed. So late as 1595, fifty-four years
after the death of Paracelsus, a physician by name
Jacques Horst, published a book on the growth of a
golden tooth in the jaw of a boy of ten. He never
doubted the fact, but naively proceeded to explain it
by a reference to the constellations under which the
boy was born. On the day of the child's birth,
December 22nd, 1586, the sun, said Horst, was in
conjunction with Saturn in the sign of the Eam ; this
supernatural circumstance produced a great increase
of heat, and so vastly augmented the nutritive forces,
that in place of bone, gold was secreted ! The author
also inferred that this tooth foretold an age of gold, to
begin with the expulsion of the Turks and the coming
of the millennium; but as the tooth grew fi'om the

METHOD AND MEDICINE. 273

lower jaw, he expressed his fears that the golden age
would be preceded by many trials.

Horst's book attracted great attention, and a
Scotchman, one Liddel, boldly repudiated the miracle
and the explanations, and attacked Horst for his
ignorance of astronomy in supposing that the sun
could be in conjunction with Saturn in the month
of December. Other authors were however much
less sceptical, and accepted the fact of the miracle,
though they ventured to question the explanations
of its cause.^"^ The possibility of such a story
being gravely narrated, gravely discussed by many,
and vigorously controverted by only one physician
of the time, is a striking commentary on the intel-
lectual degradation which prevailed.

Even in the writings of the father of modem
science, side by side with the exposition of that induc-
tive method to which we owe all modern progress ;
there are passages which show that even the, mighty
intellect of Bacon had been unable to utterly free itself
from the vain speculations of the age. For example,
the baseless hypothesis of the alchemists that all bodies
are composed of sulphur, mercury, and salt, receives
this high praise : " As a speculative doctrine it is the
best discovery that they have made."^^^' Again, in
the Historia Vitce et Mortis there are some remarkable
suggestions as to the mode of prolonging hfe.^^®^
Medicines given for this purpose are said . to act
chiefly on the spirits, "the agents and workmen
that produce all the effects in the body." Opium was

T

274 ESSAY VII.

supposed to act by condensing these spirits, and thus
conduce greatly to the prolongation of Ufe. " Exclusion
of the external air tends in two ways to prolong life.
First, because of all things, next to the internal spirit,
the external air (although it is as life to the human
spirit, and contributes very much to health) preys
upon the juices of the body and hastens its desiccation ;
whence the exclusion of the air conduces to longevity.
The second effect of the exclusion of the air is much
more deep and subtle; namely, that the body being
closed up, and not perspiring, detains the spirit within,
and turns it upon the harder parts of the body, which
are thereby rendered soft and tender."

In other places in the same treatise, the virtues
of potable gold, wine in which gold has been quenched,
pearis in fine powder or paste,- and other similar rem-
edies are spoken of as cordials tending to prolong life.
One sentence about bleeding runs thus : " I am in
some doubt whether firequent bleeding tends to lon-
gevity ; but I rather incline to beUeve it does, if it be
turned into a habit, and other things are favourable
thereto. For it discharges the old juices of the body
and lets in the new." Pigeons cut in two, and applied
to the soles of the feet, are spoken of as good remedies
"in extreme and desperate diseases."

These extracts are suflBcient to show how many
quaint notions were held by one who more than any
other writer recognized the defects of medicine, and
with the insight of true genius detected the errors and
difficulties which had impeded its scientific growth.

METHOP AND MEDICINE. 275

The germ of truth contained in the writings of
Paracelsus was not destined to die : it was hidden, not
lost, in the mass of fanciful speculations which covered
it, and bursting its way through with the irresistible
impulse of growth, it budded into higher development
in the works of Sylvius and Van Helmont. The first
did much to improve chemistry, and to render the
adoption of chemical views of disease more acceptable,
while Van Helmont shook to its base the throne of
Galen, and rescued his contemporaries from their servile
faith in personal dogmas. He introduced among other
doctrines that of the fermentation of the humours as
a frequent cause of disease, and adopted the hypothesis
of the Archaeus to explain away the difficulties which
baffled his powers of analysis. The Archaeus, however,
was very often only synonymous with fermentation.

Van Helmont, in placing the chief Archsaus in the
stomach and a subordinate one in each organ, was
in reality only figuratively describing the special
functions of each organ, and indicating that it was
the duty of medicine to study first of aU the great
central power, the cause of all vital actions, and then
the individual properties of each part. This was an
advance on the unmixed mysticism of his predecessors,
and such as might be expected from the man who dis*
covered and named that aeriform condition of matter
which we still call gas.

Up to this time the escape of medicine from the
lethal influences of scholasticism and superstition
had been slow and laboured; little had been done

276 ESSAY VII.

towards the direct improvement of the art. It was in
some respects in a worse condition than Hippocrates
had left it. Physicians had more remedies, but knew
less how to use them. The authority of Galen
certainly had been shaken, but little soUd knowledge
had been discovered to replace the dogmas which were
abolished. The foundation of chemistry had been a
great good, inasmuch as it gave men sounder notions
of the properties of matter and the laws which govern
it. The influence of experimental research is directly
opposed to the prevalence of superstition, and every
new fact in chemistry or physics obtained by its means,
increased men's faith in their own powers, and gave
them greater hopes of solving all the mysterious phe- \
nomena of nature. These hopes were much fostered by
the discoveries made in physics by the mathematicians
of the time. Headed by Borelli and Bellini, the Italian
school demonstrated that the muscles act on purely
mechanical principles, and maiiitained that all the
phenomena of health and disease might be shown to
obey the laws of hydrostatics and hydraulics.**^^ These
iatro-mathematicians acquired considerable power, and
in turn almost supplanted the chemists ; both imited,
however, in giving the death-blow to the influence
of Galen. Henceforth men were free to investigate
the secrets of nature without feeling compelled to
defer in all their observations to the opinion of a
pope.

Another influence had also been steadily and
powerfully contributing to the improvement of medical

METHOD AND MEDICINE. 277

knowledge. The study of anatomy had for some time
been cultivated in Italy with a devotion and accuracy
unknown since the Alexandrian school. The inaccuracies
of Galen had been demonstrated by Vesalius, and the
circulation of the blood through the lungs (the lesser
circulation) had been discovered by Servetus, who,
in the year of his immortal discovery, was burned by
the savage Calvin. Many other important anatomical
and physiological facts had been established, when the
illustrious Harvey made the most brilliant of aU
modem physiological discoveries by demonstrating
the circulation of the blood throughout the body.
The elucidation of this great truth marks an era
in the history of medicine; it was the foundation
of scientific physiology, and the beginning of that
experimental method of investigating the phenomena
of hfe to which we owe all the great modern additions
to our stock of knowledge. The cultivation of
anatomy engrossed many of the ablest intellects of the
time, and there resulted a tone of thought similar to
that which the same cause had produced at Alex-
andria some eighteen centuries previously. The belief
in hypotheses was to a great extent discountenanced,
and the attention concentrated on the study of facts.

As a consequence of this influence on the art of
cure, we must regard the modem apostle of the
Hippocratic school, Thomas Sydenham. Like his
great prototype, Sydenham was most careful to ex-
clude the prevailing theories from affecting his study
of the facts of disease: he followed the inductive

278 ESSAY VIL

method which his countryman, Bacon, had just com-
pleted, and under the guidance of his friend, John
Locke, himself a surgeon, he applied it to the investi-
gation of disease with splendid success. The laws
ruUng the prevalence of epidemics were elucidated,
and new and old diseases described with an accuracy
and graphic colouring which have ever since remained
unrivalled. The treatment of disease Sydenham found
lamentably uncertain from want of any fixed principle,
and from the countless remedies prescribed mainly in
accordance with a capricious fashion. In place of
this, he left therapeutics an art ordered by the prin-
ciple of aiding nature, and observing the indications
afforded by morbid processes themselves. He accepted
many of the explanations of the chemists, and attri-
buted a number of diseases to morbid fermentation in
the humours, a doctrine which has not yet ceased to
influence medical thought. Bacon had justly re-
proached the physicians of his time for their neglect
to make records of the cases of their patients.
During the dark ages the example of Hippocrates in
this respect had been forgotten : Sydenham, however,
by his bedside study again brought it into favour.
Living in a time when Kenelm Digby and the virtues
of his sympathetic powder could gain credence,
Sydenham towered high above all such vanities : he
found English medicine reduced to the lowest state
of empiricism — he raised it once more to the dignity
of a science of observation.

The discoveries in anatomy, the explanations of

METHOD AND MEDICINE. 279

the chemists and mathematicians, and the impulse
given by Sydenham to the study of actual phenomena
to the exclusion of hypotheses, were, however, power-
less to stem for any long time that current of mystic
and pietistic thought with which the church had
flooded the whole philosophy of the age. The phe-
nomena of life were very diflBcult to analyse; men
were continually baffled in their attempts to grapple
with the problem, and instead of patiently observing
the succession and relation of vital acts, they sought
to find some great principle that would comprehend
them all. As timid children in the dark whistle or
sing to keep down their rising fears, so these philo-
sophers, when awed by the presence of the inscrutable,
have always been too ready to utter some new name,
at whose magic sound the darkness of their ignorance
should lose its terrors, and facts before so terribly
obscure arrange themselves in lucid order.

Thus, when Stahl, the greatest chemist of his day,
after giving an impulse to chemistry which bore that
science steadily on towards its higher development, en-
deavoured to do the same good office for medicine, he
began by giving a fatal blow to the physico-chemical
doctrines of his contemporaries. They had contented
themselves with investigating the mechanics of the
body and the chemical constitution of its fluids, and
had aimed at finding no higher principle to account for
life. Stahl commenced his reform (1708) by showing
that all the physico-chemical forces are opposed to life,
and thus, drawing a clear line of demarcation between

280 ESSAY VII.

dead and living matter, lie attributed the properties
of the latter to an occult principle.'^®* Imbued with the
doctrines of the Cartesian philosophy, which, in 1663,
had received the approval of the pope, Stahl, a true
pietest, replaced the ArchaBus of Van Helmont by the
anvma : the immaterial principle which acting on the
material organs of the body produces all the vital
functions. This anima was outside and above matter,
superintending and regulating all the processes of life,
and coming to the rescue of every part injured by
any morbific cause. Disease was in fact only a reaction
against injury, produced by anima in its eflfort to restore
health.

This active principle of life, which corresponded
with the autocrat. Nature, of the ancients, was held
to be the chief curative power ; and the part of the
physician was, in most cases, to observe a masterly
inactivity. Stahl, however, recognized the states of
congestion and inflammation as playing a great part in
all morbid states; and as he knew these to depend
on the accumulation of blood in the vessels, he was
natm-ally led to advocate bleeding in many cases.
Expectancy in the treatment of disease, then as now,
had strong supporters, but Stahl showed his opposition
to such views by attacking them in a vigorous pamphlet
entitled, Ars sanandi cfwm expectaticme ; opposita arti
curandi rmdd expectatione. The propagation of the
doctrines of Stahl was one of the most fatal improve-
ments ever made in medicine. The tendency to explain
all the phenomena of health and disease by metaphysical

METHOD AND MEDICINE. 281

conceptions, such as the anima and vital forces, re-
ceived from his teachings irresistible power, and
diverted men's attention from the study of the
phenomena immediately before them. The physical
inquiries which had, at one time, done so much, were
forgotten, and even when the experimental school
recovered its vigour, the observation of actual pheno-
mena was long obscured by the prevailing mist of
metaphysical doctrine.

Haller, the founder of modern physiology, made
the next important step in advance (1739) by de-
monstrating that the so-called vital forces resided in
the tissues of the body : this checked the prevailing
tendency to regard all the powers of Hfe as something
superior to and apart from matter. Irritability the pro-
perty of muscle, and sensibiUty the property of nerve,
he declared to be the only vital forces. More than half
a century previously, Glisson, an Oxford professor, in
the course of his anatomical investigations, had noticed
that all hving organisms had a power of reacting phy-
siologically against external conditions, and this he
described as the essential characteristic of life, and he
named it irritability. Haller' s views were an extension
and modification of those of Glisson ; and as they were
founded on a most elaborate series of experimental
proofs, they attracted much attention to the value of
experiment, and gave an impetus to anatomical and
physiological research which has lasted down to our
own times.

A brisk controversy grew out of Haller 's dis-

282 ESSAY VII.

coveries, and the school of modem yitalists was
one of the products. These vitalists invented the
hypothesis of a vital principle, on which depended all
the phenomena of life in the animal and vegetable
worlds. To the strictest of the school the vital prin-
ciple was like the anima of Stahl, a simple immaterial
principle, a first and special cause of aU the manifesta-
tions of hfe : to others less orthodox in their opinions,
it was only a pivot on which their system of physiology
worked, a convenient formula for the dogmatic expo-
sition of their doctrines, and an indication of their
impatience of leaving things without explanation : to
a third class this vital principle was simply the result-
ant of certain complex physico-chemical laws acting
in organized beings. These last were called by the
ugly name of materialists, which their opponents found
by far the most powerful kind of argument they could
adduce against men, who sought in such forces as
electricity and heat, the solution of the mystery of life.
In the discussions which followed, the views of
Haller were almost entirely forgotten, and undiluted
vitaUsm reigned supreme. In England, however, they
found a great supporter in Brown,^^®* who seeking to
assail the system of his contemporary CuUen, which
was built up on solidism in pathology, and vitalism
in physiology, foimd in the teachings of Haller the
weapons he required. The phenomena of life, Brown
asserted, are to be foimd only where two conditions
coexist; an organism and a suitable medium. Vital
force is an hypothesis, and explains nothing. Life,

METHOD AND MEDICINE. 283

according to Brown, depends wholly on external in-
fluences, such as heat, air, water, &c., which act on the
organism as excitants (stimuh), and excitability (the
irritability of Haller) is the property by which Kving
matter reacts against them. Health consists in the
perfect balance between excitability and the excitement
produced by stimulation. Disease results from excess
or defect of this excitement, and in nearly all cases
represents a condition of debility, either "direct" or
"indirect."

The Brunonian system found many adherents :
Lamarck and Tiedemann adopted and extended it, and
in Italy it was received with much favour. Broussais,
at a later date (1816), selecting some of its principles,
constructed that system of physiological medicine which
has made him famous, and which was the first formal
exposition of the mutual interdependence of pathology
and physiology. ^^^ With Brown he held that irritation,
or stimulation, was, in its proper amount, necessary to
life, and when excessively increased was the source
of all disease; but he diflFered from his Bnghsh pre-
decessor in holding that local irritation and not con-
stitutional was the essential morbific cause. In this
elevation of local at the expense of general action,
Broussais is in striking agreement with the greatest
of modem pathologists, Virchow, who has restored,
after a period of neglect, the views of Haller and
Brown. Irritability is again the criterion of life and
death. " Every vital action," says Virchow, " presup-
poses an excitation, if you Uke, an irritation." ^^^^ This

284 ESSAY yn.

the most modem doctrine, which has almost beaten out
of the field the previously dominant notion that the
nervous system is the real centre of life, replaces the
unity of the neurists, by the activity of individual
parts, and gives to every tissue the irritabiUty which
constitutes life and may engender disease. The
organism thus considered becomes a kind of " organic
social institution," which depends for its healthy
working on the good behaviour of its countless
component cells.

This cellular pathology, which has the great merit
of being based on the results of the most minute
anatomy of the tissues, and of embracing in its expla-
nations very many facts which before obeyed no law,
may be justly described as the most fruitful general-
ization of modem times. On analysis, however, there
is still to be found a metaphysical conception lying
at its base, endangering by its presence the whole
superstructure: The iiritabiUiy of the cell is but
another name for vital force; and when the cells
are given, by virtue of this irritability, the power of
attracting to themselves the nutritive fluids from
which the materials of new cells are to be obtained,
we reaUy have another phase of vitahsm, skilfully
disguised it is true, and explanatory of a vastly greater
number of facts than any preceding theory, and
therefore nearer to the truth, but nevertheless resting
at last on as artificial an abstraction as any.

The comparatively late period at which physiology
began to escape from its metaphysical stage, accounts

METHOD AND MEDICINE. 285

for the continued existence of abstract notions in
pathology, a science which is really only an extension
of the laws of life to the more complex phenomena
of disease. Both subjects have ever presented such
difficulties to the observer, that, repeatedly foiled
in his attempts to fathom the origin and purposes
of hfe, he has accepted metaphysical explanations as
the only ones forthcoming. Thus in the pathology
of to-day it is scarcely realized, that to make any
obscure fact depend on vital force, or irritability,
is simply to refer it to something still more obscure.
Science knows no such method, but ever seeks to
explain the more complex by the more simple; and
regarding life as the most complex of aU conditions,
holds that it can never serve as an explanation of
any fact.

The recognition of this canon by the physiologist
has of late so guided his march that every recent
victory has rescued some shp of territory from the
arbitrary domination of vital force and has reduced
it to the orderly government of mechanical and
chemical laws. Pathology, although wishing to ad-
vance by the same route is, however, as yet unable to
walk alone without the metaphysical crutches which
the elder sister has cast aside. And therapeutics,
dependent on both, has, Uke a mirror, reflected the
many changing expressions of the other branches of
medicine, at one time complacently yielding to the
unchecked luxuriance of vitahstic hypotheses, and at
others grimly accepting the darkness of empiricism, or

286 ESSAY VII.

despairingly embracing a feeble expectancy. Dealing
with the most difficult problems of all, it still lags far
behind, awaiting of necessity the succour which a
higher knowledge of the laws of health and disease
alone can bring.

** Certaiiily the greatest gap in the science of medicine is to be
found in its final and supreme stage — the stage of therapeutics. . . «
To me it has been a lifelong wonder how vaguely, how ignorantly, how
rashly, drugs are often prescribed. We try this ; and not succeeding,
we try that ; and baffled again, we try something else, and it is fortunate
if we do no harm in these our tryings. Now, this random and hap-
hazard practice, wherever and by whomsoever adopted, is both dan-
gerous in itself and discreditable to medicine as a science. Our
profession is continually fluctuating on a sea of doubts about questions
of the gravest importance." t^)

K words have any meaning, surely these, uttered
only two years ago by a great living authority, in an
address on the present state of practical medicine,
offer the strongest justification of Bernard's statement,
that scientific medicine does not exist.^^* At aU events,
the supreme stage of therapeutics sadly lacks that
certainty which science gives. This admission does
not, however, condemn medicine, it only confesses
an unavoidable state of imperfection. When the great
French physiologist denied the existence of scientific
medicine, he spoke a criticism, not a censure. No one
has seen more clearly and indicated more forcibly than
he the great defects in the scientific aspect of the
study of health and disease ; and no one has so well
shown that the cultivation of experimental physiology
is the necessary preliminary of the evolution of
medicine.

METHOD AND MEDICINE. 287

The development of medicine as a science is slow,
because the knowledge on which it must be raised is
slow to come. The base of a pyramid must be
constructed first, and stone by stone the building
raised till the crowning glory of its apex is com-
pleted. But while some are busy in giving form to
the first parts of the edifice, other workmen are well
employed in making ready the stones which shall find
a place nearer to the apex, or compose the apex
itself. So it is with medicine : physiology must form
the base, pathology the middle, and therapeutics the
a^pex. But while the foundations are being well laid,
materials may be prepared for the construction of the
later parts, if the hands of the workers have only
enough of skill and method to fit them for the work*

In the past, medicine in the effort to attain a higher
form, has had to depend on methods incompetent to
grapple with the complex phenomena of life in all its
phases. The method of observation, which in the
hands of its great masters — Hippocrates, Aristotle,
and Sydenham — produced such noble firstfiniits, has
nevertheless failed in its later yield. A science of
observation with a knowledge of many of the laws
of health and disease, and a prevision of the courses of
maladies, satisfied not ; and fi'om the ill-ordered eflRorts
to create a more powerful medicine have resulted a host
of useless speculations. Scepticism and credulity have
in turn prevailed, and the scientific aspect of medicine
has from time to time been lost in the rank growth of
hypothesis, or the trackless jungle of empiricism.

288 ESSAY VII.

The time for all these evils to end has now
come, and men are beginning to learn that observation
which was alone sufficient to conduct to a correct
knowledge of the simpler sciences, such as astronomy
and geology, is insufficient to lead to the solution of
the more difficult. Physics and chemistry, dealing
with more complex problems, never escaped from em-
piricism till a second method of investigation — experi-
ment — ^was introduced. This, by enabUng the inquirer
to produce the phenomena which he desires to study,
to isolate and combine them, and to change their
conditions at will, has given to these sciences a per-
fection which was never to be attained by the apph-
cation of observation alone. In the phenomena of life
there is still greater complexity to unravel, and
a fortiori^ observation is still less adequate, and must
be aided by the method of the chemist, experiment,
and supplemented by a third specially adapted to the
work.

Observation, the sole method of the ancients, was
in medicine, as in other subjects, the beginning of all
inteUigent action ; and assisted as it now is by the
many appKances of modern invention, which mar-
vellously augment the power and precision of our
senses, it is still a most fertile method, accuracy and
skill in which are fundamental requisites.

It is, however, to the application of experiment
to physiological investigation that we owe the great
results of Harvey, Haller, and others. The greatest
victories have been won, not by a passive obser-

METHOD AND MEDICINE. 289

vation of the phenomena of life, but by the active in-
terference of the experimenter, who has laid bare the
hidden organs of the body and studied their functions
while in action. In the same way, by extending the
inquiry into the laws of Ufe varied by the presence of
disease, experiment oflTers the best means of analysing
morbid processes, of imitating and producing them at
will, in order to understand the mutual relations of
their symptoms. Some of the most important and
startKng discoveries in pathology have been arrived at
by this method; to it we owe that knowledge of
tubercular diseases, epilepsy, and many others, which
enables us to produce their phenomena in animals in
order to study the mechanism of the disorder, and
discover the means of arresting or preventing it. The
chief obstacle to progress in these inquiries now, is the
imdeveloped state of organic chemistry. When the
chemist can detect those delicate chemical variations in
the fluids of the body which serve as the origin of
many diseases of nutrition, experimental pathology,
rejoicing in this new light, will clearly detect the
principal element of many diseases, which, like the
bower of a labyrinth, has been, but for a single
obstacle, so often gained.

Comparison, the third method of investigation, is,
as Comte has pointed out, especially adapted to bio-
logical study. By the use of it particular organs and
fiinctions may be examined throughout the whole
organic series, from their most rudimentary state to
their most elaborate development. The experiments

u

290 ESSAY VII.

which nature is everywhere making on so grand a scale
may be interpreted by means of comparison, with ahnost
the same precision as experiments in a laboratory, and in
proportion to their universality they will yield a deeper
insight into the necessary conditions and origin of life.
To quote the words of Comte, " There is clearly no
structure or function whose analysis may not be per-
fected by an examination of what all organisms offer
in common with regard to that structure and function,
and by the simplification effected by the stripping
away of all accessory characteristics, till the quality
sought is found alone, from whence the process of
reconstruction can begin. It may even be fairly said,
that no anatomical arrangement, and no physiological
phenomenon, can be really understood tiU the abstract
notion of its principal element is thus reached, by
successively attaching to it all secondary ideas, in the
rational order prescribed by their greater or less
persistence in the organic series." ^^*

The signal truths which this method has produced
in the hands of Cuvier and Owen, . in one direction,
and in the hands of Bichat, Lamarck, and Darwin,
in others, read more like the creations of a poet's
fancy than the sober results of scientific research.
It was the application of comparison to pathology,
which the far-seeing genius of Hunter anticipated,
when he conceived the grand thought of including
in pathology, not the diseases of man alone, but all
the abnormities to be found in the organic and
inorganic worlds. This grand conception of a science

METHOD AND MEDICINE. 291

of the abnormal, this prevision of the regularity of
irregularities, and of the reduction to fixed laws of
phenomena apparently infinitely variable, stamp John
Hunter as the most philosophical pathologist of any
age ; and when realized in that comparative pathology
which is yet to be created, will form the safest and
widest basis of medicine as a science.

By these three methods, Observation, Experiment,
and Comparison, all the phenomena of health and
disease must be investigated before any theories
can be formed capable of giving scientific certainty
to the practice of the physician. The external forms
of maladies, and the laws which regulate their courses,
are comparatively well known; what is now wanted
is a knowledge of the causes which produce disordered
health. When once the cause or initial phenom-
enon of the morbid series is identified, the mechanism
of disease will be mastered, and its rational treatment
will follow. To gain this knowledge the energies of
medicine must be devoted to pathological experiment
and comparison, and no longer dissipated in a vain
search after specifics.

Now and again, in the progress of medicine, a
remedy for a disease has been discovered by the hap-
hazard administration of a drug ; but judging fi'om the
past, countless ages would pass away before each
disease would find its remedy by such a method ; and
the discovery when made would still leave knowledge in
a purely empirical state, holding no clue to the mode
of action of the remedy or to the actual cause of the

292 ESSAT VII.

malady. The active principle of Jesuit*s bark has cured
ague ever since 1639, but the maimer in which the
cure is effected is still unknown, because the mechanism
of the disease still baffles our attempts at analysis.
So it must remain, in all cases, till the application of
experiment, by artificially producing the morbid phe-
nomena under more simple conditions, and analysing
their succession and relation, isolates the initial
phenomenon of the series, and gives medicine a de-
^nite object to attack. In the laboratory of the
physiologist some diseases can be developed with
almost the same certainty as a chemical decomposition
is effected ; and as the experimenter gains power the
number of morbid states thus producible, will increase,
and our intimate acquaintance with their causes will
lead to a proportionate improvement in treatment. In
many parasitic diseases this knowledge has already
been gained, and the cure is consequently speedy and
certain. The destruction of the parasite (the initial
phenomenon) controls all the secondary manifestations,
which in the past were regarded as the essential
characters of the disease.

In the same way all morbific principles must be
isolated before a rigorously scientific mode of cure
can be devised. At present so little is known of the
nature of disease-producing agents, that next to nothing
can be attempted in the way of directly neutralizing
their effects or preventing their action. The practical
duties of medicine, however, brook no delay ; diseases
must be treated and epidemics checked ; and until the

METHOD AND MEDICINE. 293

higher reign of scientific law comes, the slowly gar-
nered wisdom of experience and the approximative
truths of empirical laws must suffice. The medicine of
to-day, unable to act directly on the initial phe-
nomenon of a disease, devotes aU its powers to
limiting the variations from the healthy standard
which the morbid cause excites. Eude attempts to
strangle disease no longer find acceptance, and modern
treatment, if not less empirical in its character, is
infinitely less rash in its measures and less dangerous
in its fashions.

In the other branch of medicine, the preservation
of health, there is the same ; necessary dependence
on a more or less conjectural basis, for the higher
certainty can only come with a more extended know-
ledge of the physiology of the healthy and morbid
states. But meanwhile, improvements in drainage, and
purity of water supply, are all raising great obstacles
to the supremacy of disease, and are supplying sanitary
data from which useful generahzations will come.

That our theories in medicine with regard to the
prevention of disease and its treatment are ever
changing is no reproach, they must change as know-
ledge grows. "A theory," said a great French chemist,
" established on twenty facts should serve to explain
thirty, and lead to the discovery of ten more; but it
will nearly always be modified or overthrown before
ten new facts are added to these last."^^^ Till the
laws which govern vital phenomena under all conditions
are better known, the treatment and prevention of

294 ESSAY VII,

disease must rest on a rational empiricism. Before a
drug can be scientifically applied to the relief of sick-
ness, the modifications which it produces on healthy
functions must be known; and the difficulty of obtaining
trustworthy data in so complex an inquiry is evident.
The discovery of the modus operandi of a remedy in
disease is, however, a task incomparably more difficult,
since it is an attempt to learn the influence exercised
by the remedy, not on healthy functions, of which we
know Uttle, but on a variation of healthy functions, of
which we know less. It is an endeavour to find the
value of an unknown quantity by means of two others
whose values are very imperfectly known. Surely
when the progress of phyfflology is so slow, the back-
ward state of therapeutics, though it may warrant
regret, does not justify reproach.

The courage of patience is the courage which,
above all, is now wanted in medicine: to wait and
work till, in the fulness of time, the simpler branches
of the triad of medicine are made ready for the
evolution of its crowning science. In the past, this
courage has too often given way under a noble im-
patience of imperfection, and the work of ages has
been destroyed by premature attempts at completion.

Now chastened by repeated failures we have aban-
doned all inquiries into final causes as a search beyond
the powers of the human mind, and concentrating our
attention on the laws which regulate the succession
and relation of phenomena we are content to move more
slowly and more surely towards that perfect wisdom.

METHOD AND MEDICINE. 295

whence comes perfect action. In this new stage of
growth, medicine less and less dependent on the blind
gropings of empiricism and no more subject to meta-
physical systems, will learn to apply to the great
problems of health and disease the invariable laws of
science; then the physician, no longe;* condemned to
contemplate in miserable inaction the progress of a
disease whose course he cannot control, will defeat by
exact knowledge the subtlest approaches of his foe:
"homo minister et interpres naturae, quantum scit,
tantum potest."

BALTHAZAR W. FOSTER.

296 ESSAY vir.

NOTES.

<i) Sprenge^ Histoire de la MMecine, par Jourdan; voL i, p. 234.
(') Aristotle refuted this notion. Vide Sprengel ; voL i, note, p. 260.
(') Boulet, Dubitationes de Hippocratis vitft, patriA, genealogia, forsa

mythologicis, et de qnibasdam ejns libris molto antiqnioribi

qnam Yulgo creditar. Paris, An. XII.

(4) The Genuine Works of Hippocrates, translated by Adams, S jdenhai

Society ; vol. i, p. 255-56.

(5) Bostock, History of Medicine in Cyclopsadia of Practical Medicine

chap, iii, p. 16.
(0) Translation of Niton's Letter in Figaro, given in Lancet ; vol. i
1869, p. 491.

(7) Aitken's Science and Practice of Medicine ; 5th edit., vol. i, p. 926.

(8) Sprengel ; vol. ii, p. 151.

<*> Origen contra Celsum ; lib. 8, chap. zxxL Vol. i, p. 765, Benedictin

edition.
U<>) St. Angnstine, Opera Omnia; vol. yi, p. 509, Benedictine editioi
De Divinatione Dasmonam ; chap. y.

(11) Anastas; qusBst zx, p. 238 (ed. Oretser). Vide Sprengel; vol. i

p. 157.

(12) Sprengel ; vol. iii, sec. 9, chap. iL

'is> Cabanis, Les E^volations de la M^decine ; 1804 ; p. 135.

(14) Liddell, de Dente Aureo. Hamburgh, 1628. Vide Sprengel ; vol. il
p. 248.

(16) Spedding's Bacon ; vol. v, p. 205.
(i«> lb. ; voL V, p. 217—335.

(17) Bostock, op. cit. ; chap, ix, p. 50.

(18) Cabanis, op. cit. ; chap, i, sec. 77. Sprengel; voL v, p. 195. Claud

Bernard, Lemons sur les propri^t^s des Tissus Yivants; p. 67.

(19) The Elements of Medicine, by John Brown, M.D. London, 1788.

(20) Examen de la Doctrine M^dicale, par F. J. Y. Broussais. Paris

1816.

(21) Virchow's Cellular Pathology, translated by Dr. Chance; pp. 28*

and 387.

(22) Sir Thomas Watson, Address on the present state of Therapeutics

delivered at first meeting of Clinical Society of London, 1868. Vidi
Lancet ; vol. i, 1868, p. 76.

(23) Pall Mall Gazette, vol. i, 1869, p. 1 029, and vol. ii, 1869, p. 1493. Revu<

des Cours Scientifiques, 19 Mars, 1870.

(24) The Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte, translated by Harriei

Martineau ; vol. i, p. 377.

(25) Dumas, Philosophic Chimique ; p. 60.

Printed by Josiah Allen, jnn., Birmingham.

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